Well, isn’t that something. Less than a week after sources familiar with the matter told us that the Campbell Ewald executive team “remains in place” following the agency winning Cadillac account management duties, AdAge today echoes what many tipsters were saying prior to the win, that chairman/CEO Bill Ludwig is out. Since June 6, we’ve been hearing on the Spy Line that Ludwig (and possibly one other member of the executive team) was literally shown the door days prior to CE securing its portion of said automaker’s account. AdAge, though, merely reports that Ludwig has “stepped down.”
Ludwig, who still toplines CE’s leadership section on its site, has been with the Detroit stalwart for the duration of his 30-year ad career, starting as a copywriter before moving up the ranks to chief creative/strategy officer to his most recent position at the top of the agency’s food chain. We’ll try to get some comment from Campbell Ewald if possible and will update if and when we can.
Update: The same sources familiar with CE that we talked to last week tell us that “nothing’s changed” since last week, so yeah, consider us confused.