• Ad Age, Thursday, January 25, 2007 11:47 AM

Wendy's will move its $300 million account from Interpublic's McCann Erickson to Publicis' Saatchi & Saatchi with Saatchi sister shop MediaVest taking over media buying and planning from Universal McCann.

The fate of the business has long been the subject of speculation, and various agencies have met with Ian Rowden, senior vice president-chief marketing officer, according to insiders. He refuses to comment; ditto the fast-food chain's spokespeople.

But according to one agency exec, Rowden eschewed the traditional pitch process for a series of meetings with agencies in which each showed off their work and talked about ideas for Wendy's. "They picked an agency and not a campaign, and that is how you should find an agency," says a source close to the process.

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