The Los Angeles offices of Crispin Porter + Bogusky laid off approximately 5 percent of all staff this week due to a change in the status of its Infiniti account.
As reported on Tuesday, the Nissan-owned luxury auto brand moved parts of its global ad business away from CP+B to another MDC Partners entity led by 72andSunny. The L.A. office had officially become global headquarters for that work as of last March.
“This week we parted ways with 5% of our staff from the CP+B LA office,” said CP+B West president Danielle Aldrich in a statement. “Saying goodbye to our colleagues and friends is the most difficult part of this business and something we do not take lightly. We are working closely with those affected to support their efforts in moving forward.”
An agency spokesperson declined to elaborate further, but the layoffs do not seem to have included any executive-level staffers.
Since news of the account change first broke, we have learned some more details. 72andSunny and CP+B both continue to defer to the client for comment, but sources tell us that the former agency will now handle global brand work for Infiniti while the latter retains U.S. creative as well as related campaigns in the U.K. and China.
According to three parties with knowledge of the business, the change had been coming for some time and amounted to an ultimately successful effort by MDC Partners to keep the business within its larger network.
Other parties indicate that MDC has begun sending a list of the departees around to its other agencies to try and relocate them. In addition to Infiniti, CP+B has also worked on several other major accounts including PayPal while also contributing to clients managed by the agency’s headquarters in Boulder, Colorado.