Ogilvy Learns to Work at JWT

This week’s rumor had Mrs. Smith’s Bakeries dumping J. Walter Thompson like a loaf of stale bread.

“It’s news to me,” said JWT Atlanta general manager Jeff White. “But I’ve been surprised before.”

After a call to client marketing director Don Kemp in Suwanee, Ga., and the assurance that the $3 million account was not in play, White returned to managing his $220 million, 160-person agency.

Like other agency executives dealing with the fallout of forced mergers or consolidations, White has been juggling staff and client concerns since the WPP Group ordered the shutdown of Ogilvy & Mather’s Atlanta office last spring.

Most of Ogilvy’s remaining accounts—the U.S.