Time Warner Cable kicked off a creative review in the fourth quarter of last year, handled by Ark Advisors in New York, with very little fanfare. Now Adweek reports that Ogilvy & Mather New York, the cable communication company’s creative agency since 2004, is not one of the three finalists left standing in the review.
Those finalists include San Francisco agency Eleven, Inc, DDB New York and Leo Burnett Chicago. It’s unclear if Ogilvy & Mather chose to defend in the review, which does not include media (which will remain with OMD), or direct advertising (still handled by RAPP). If the agency had decided not to defend, or already knew it wouldn’t be one of the finalists, it could have been a factor in last month’s “standard operating procedure” layoffs.
According to Kantar Media, Time Warner Cable spent $188.1 million on measured media through the first nine months of 2015 and $245.5 million in 2014. The review follows a promising year for Time Warner, which saw its revenue increase 3.9 percent, its highest increase in five years.