-By Della de Lafuente

NEW YORK Nissan North America has hired Chicago-based consultancy Jones Lundin Beals to manage a review to find an agency for its multicultural marketing business, the automaker confirmed Tuesday.
 
The client's Nissan and Infiniti brands spend a combined $1 billion annually in domestic measured media, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Nissan spent close to $35 million in 2007 for domestic Hispanic TV alone.
 
"We're always looking at ways to maximize synergies and efficiencies for our marketing effort, and to that end, we plan to perform an agency search for our multicultural marketing activities," said client representative Kathryn Fields.
 
Duties for the agency, including whether the account would involve the multicultural business for both Nissan and Infiniti, haven't yet been determined. It's also not yet known whether the automaker would enlist one or multiple shops to handle duties aimed at ethnic-specific markets, though Fields reiterated Nissan's goal of creating efficiencies within the company.
 
Agencies invited to participate in the review will be based on a list of candidates culled by the search firm, Fields said.
 
Incumbents responsible for existing multicultural duties will be invited to participate in the review, Fields said. They include: Vidal Partnership, New York, (which handles Hispanic duties for Nissan); Marca Hispanic, Coconut Grove, Fla., (Hispanic duties for Infiniti); and the True Agency, Los Angeles, (African-American duties on Nissan and Infiniti), the client said.
 
Omnicom's Zimmerman Advertising, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., handles Nissan's retail marketing at the local and regional levels for both the Hispanic and general market, Fields said. It was unclear whether Zimmerman would be asked to participate in the review.

--with Andrew McMains