• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, July 5, 2013

Iconic fashion house Chanel has selected WPP to create a team of specialists from several of the holding company’s agencies to create a new Chanel-dedicated shop.

The decision came after a six-month assessment that started as a media review back in January. The scope of work for the new agency includes global media duties, along with some creative, digital and other marketing chores.

Chanel spends an estimated $250 million on ads each year.

The new agency will be called Chanel Plus. The shop’s team will be cherrypicked from WPP shops, including MEC, which has been media agency incumbent on the business, as well as staffers from Mindshare, Ogilvy & Mather, and digital shop AKQA.

For WPP, Chanel Plus is the latest agency the holding company has agreed to create dedicated to a single client. Similar custom shops have been assembled for Ford, Lincoln, and Bank of America, among others.

While WPP has had success with the approach, it has not always worked. In 2008, WPP set up a dedicated agency for Dell called Enfatico to handle ad marketing duties for the computer giant. But that shop struggled from the outset and shuttered about a year after it was created, with many of its assignments eventually leaving the WPP fold. An earlier effort for Samsung didn't work out, either.

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