According AdAge… marketers apparently can’t get enough of reorganization, but they aren’t getting much satisfaction from it either.
No surprise there as the people controlling the re-org are usually the ones responsible for much of the initial mess.
Reorganization – of the internal teams and the external agencies – has reached a crescendo at Cadbury Schweppes. The internal teams have already been wracked by one big round of layoffs, ostensibly to make the beverages side of the company more attractive to potential buyers, and has another one lined up if the rumors are to be believed. Then there are all of the people who have left the company of their own accord – almost the entire Brand and Activation team on Snapple and Mott’s – and others, including Director of Interactive Erika Knight.
That move doesn’t bode well for interactive agency VML.
Nor does the fact that VML’s WPP cousins Mediaedge:cia and Y&R have been fired and are in a review that Cadbury Schweppes is pretending isn’t a review respectively. The word is that they might just fire all of their agencies and start fresh with a completely new roster across all brands and functions. That would be fun.
Maybe Cadbury Schweppes could just pull a Dell and just start their own agency completely staffed with cronies and old friends of the VP of Marketing and the CMO (or whoever is calling the shots over there).
While this sort of behavior is par for the course with many marketers (I know that everyone reading this has at least one horror story and maybe more) it is still fucked up. Especially so is the word that Y&R, which isn’t exactly a Daily Biz favorite, was not told that other agencies were pitching against it and officially heard the news through Adweek.
What a classy organization.
4 responses so far ↓
Johnny Rotten // March 18, 2008 at 2:19 pm |
What happen to the fun, innovative brand that Snapple used to be?
Have you seen the most recent Snapple product launches?
The juice drinks (with less than 10% juice, huh?) with a new, vertical green Snapple logo. (duh! what were they thinking?)
And whats the deal with Antioxidant Water? Can you rip off Glaceau Vitaminwater any more?
All this is going on while the existing product design looks like its from 10 years ago. hmmmm. Definitely makes you think there is a clear lack of focus at the helm.
With all the house cleaning going on at Cadbury they should start looking to the chiefs and leave the indians alone (which ever ones are left!)
They should sell to Coke or Pepsi before they totally drive the brand into the ground.
Dr Doom // March 27, 2008 at 11:20 am |
They cut the entire organization in half and removed marketing & OPS. No one in TX knows shit about marketing snapple, too busy driving the Dr around. Look for the fire sale in June. The Brand is already in Quaker-Zone. Tried any lately? Nice job launching ready-to-drink Accelerade guys!!
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[...] things…then it was sold and sold again and under the aegis of Cadbury Schweppes, it seems, to paraphrase one commenter, primed for sale to Coke and [...]