HP Is ‘Dialing Back’ Its Work With 180LA

By Patrick Coffee 

Just over six months after tasking 180LA with a major rebranding campaign, HP (formerly Hewlett-Packard) has decided to move work away from the Omnicom agency, which parted ways with “a small number” of staffers after news of the decision broke.

The client has worked with roster shops including 180LA and BBDO for several years, with the former producing a variety of projects including a 2014 holiday campaign starring pop star Meghan Trainor. HP recently added Gyro and Paris-based independent agency Fred&Farid as CMO Antonio Lucio, who joined the company from Visa in 2015, moved to better define the printer/personal computer portion of the business after it split from the main company late last year.

180LA, BBDO and Gyro collaborated on last November’s “Keep Reinventing,” which brought back the “Inventing” tagline from 2009.

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An HP spokesperson writes:

“We have huge respect and affinity for 180. They have been a tremendous partner.

As part of our own reinvention we are carefully looking at our agency model both for alignment and scale as well as for partners that best map to our long term needs. We are dialing back our work with 180 while we are dialing up our work with other partners.”

180LA had to part ways with some staffers as a result of the change; the news came just as the shop added several new hires to its creative department following the recent Miller Lite win. We do not have specifics regarding the number of employees who were let go, and the agency declined to comment.

We do hear that Fred&Farid, which describes itself as “a social, content, tech solutions for brands company,” has produced a large share of HP’s recent marketing efforts and that it may also inherit most of the work previously handled by 180LA.

BBDO, Fred&Farid and Gyro officially remain on the client’s roster at this time.

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