• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, December 8, 2011

Interpublic’s Initiative has been awarded the media planning and buying assignment for LifeLock, the identity theft protection firm. Last year the company spent approximately $60 million on ads, according to Kantar Media.

The assignment was made without a formal review and comes as the client has decided to do more national advertising on TV and other media per sources. Previously, the client handled media chores in-house.

The company was founded in 2005, and last year had revenues of more than $130 million, according to Inc., which last year reported that LifeLock was one of the top-10, fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S.

LifeLock is based in Tempe, Ariz., and the account will be handled out of Initiative’s Los Angeles office.

The win comes on the heels of a disappointing loss for Initiative -- the U.S. media assignment for pharmaceutical and healthcare company Bayer, which is in the process of shifting the account to MediaCom, per sources. 

Those two developments reflect the kind of year that Initiative has had in 2011 -- full of ups and somewhat bigger downs. The agency started off 2011 by adding financial services company USAA and its $100 million planning and buying assignment.

A short time later, it lost longtime client and multimillion-dollar ad spender Home Depot. It bounced back in March by winning the nearly $200 million combined Hasbro/The Hub assignment. The Hub is a joint venture children’s network between Hasbro and Discovery Communications.

Then in the summer, it lost the buying assignment for S.C. Johnson, which spends roughly $400 million on domestic ads. SCJ landed at WPP’s Maxus. In between, it won Petco -- with spending of nearly $20 million -- and now LifeLock.