Droga5 has resigned from the Motorola account, ending its relationship with the client after approximately 4 years together.
The agency won the business in 2012 and has created a range of work since then including this campaign starring elaborate set design and another effort promoting the client’s smart watch by mocking the entire “wearables” movement. (This is standard operating procedure for Droga5, of course.)
The decision was made last month. Droga5 will not be producing any additional campaigns for Motorola, and the two parties are currently winding down their relationship by completing some final production work.
From an agency spokesperson:
“Droga5 New York has resigned the Motorola account. The company has undergone many structural changes since Droga5 was first appointed and the agency felt it was no longer an appropriate fit. We wish them every success in their future.”
The agency’s PR department declined to elaborate on the reasons behind the move or to provide comment beyond this quote. A client spokesperson also confirmed the news, writing, “Our business has changed significantly since Droga5 was first appointed and they decided that they were no longer the best fit for us.”
We hear from multiple sources that the key precipitating event was Lenovo’s 2014 acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google, which had purchased the company’s phone business in 2012 around the same time Droga5 won the account. That unit operates independently of what is now known as Motorola Solutions, and the parent company announced in January that it would be “phasing out” the brand name entirely. By 2017, Motorola Mobility will be merged into Lenovo’s existing phone business…so the Moto X and other products will soon bear the Lenovo name.
According to tipsters, the single deciding factor in the split was the recent departure of Motorola’s chief marketing officer Adrienne Hayes, who formerly ran the division’s communications for Google. After this story first ran, a Motorola Mobility spokesperson confirmed that Hayes had been replaced by Jan Huckfeldt, former VP of marketing for the EMEA region at Lenovo. We also hear that a campaign created by Droga5 and set to launch this summer was shelved due to this executive turnover.
One would presume that a creative agency review will follow. Given recent changes in the company’s structure, no numbers regarding the value of the business are available at this time.