• Adweek, Sunday, July 19, 2009 9:37 PM

The refocused efforts of IPG's Universal McCann seem to be finally paying off. The agency, which stumbled badly a few years back with a string of major client losses, has won four pitches in the last two months with combined ad spending of $550 million. Last week, the shop won the $100 million Charles Schwab account and successfully defended its $210 million buying account with Nationwide. Not counting Nationwide, the shop has won more net new business this year -- $340 million -- than it did in the previous five years, without any client losses so far.

Why the turnaround? Worldwide CEO Matt Seiler has made several moves to better position the shop, such as hiring Jen Hohman as svp, managing director of new business about nine months ago. The shop now picks a separate business development team for each pitch, with many of those team members sticking with the client if UM wins the business -- a strategy increasingly being used by media companies.

In addition, the shop reaches out to media oversight unit Mediabrands, formed a year ago, for help with specialized services like outdoor or newspapers. The shop has also poured resources into a live consumer insight panel with 170,000 participants, and upgraded channel-allocation tools and its process for monitoring what consumers are saying about brands.

Read the whole story at Adweek »