BBDO Picks Up Mercedes

Mercedes-Benz on Wednesday announced plans to delegate a significant portion of its global business, including interactive duties, to Omnicom Group's BBDO.

BBDO New York, which developed projects for Mercedes in Europe, anticipates assignments in at least a dozen new markets. BBDO spokesman Roy Elvove said that part of those responsibilities would include interactive work, but added that is too early to provide details.

"Essentially, BBDO picks up [business] in markets outside Germany and those key countries where existing relationships remain unchanged (e.g., U.S, UK, France, Japan, Spain, Italy," Elvove said in an email.

Mercedes-Benz spent $160 million in U.S. measured media last year and has already spent that much through the first three quarters of 2006, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

"By reorganizing our partnerships with the agencies, we are aiming to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing activities worldwide not only in terms of quality, but also time and costs," Olaf Gottgens, client vice president of brand communications for Mercedes, said in a statement released Wednesday.

In the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Spain and Japan, Mercedes-Benz will continue to work with its current agency partners, Mercedes said in the statement.

German agency Jung von Matt will become Mercedes' lead agency in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the automaker announced, while BBDO will implement concepts from Jung von Matt in multimedia worldwide.

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