• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, Tom Siebert , January 15, 2007

The long and winding Wal-Mart advertising review came to its second conclusion Friday, with The Martin Agency getting tapped for creative and MediaVest the surprise winner for media.

Martin topped Ogilvy & Mather, while MediaVest defeated Carat and Mediaedge:cia.

All those agencies, save MediaVest, were finalists in the first review for the business--which saw the account awarded to and then withdrawn from DraftFCB and Carat, following the departure of Wal-Mart's Senior Vice President of Marketing Julie Roehm.

MediaVest was an 11th-hour addition to the re-review. MediaVest was invited back to pitch the business several days after the initial invitations went out to the other agencies in early December.

MediaVest was paired with sister Publicis agency Saatchi & Saatchi during the early rounds of the first Wal-Mart pitch, which was conducted on a "bundled" basis, combining creative/brand and media shops as contenders. The team made it to the second round, but pulled out when Saatchi won J.C. Penney's account.

The loss must be a crushing one for Carat, which originally won the media assignment as part of a bundled team with Interpublic's Draft FCB unit. But it was forced to go it alone in the re-pitch when Wal-Mart pulled the account from Draft FCB, due to questions surrounding how that review was conducted.

Carat was believed to have been in the throes of building a huge organization--staffing as many as 100 people in a new Chicago office to service the Wal-Mart account.

Martin's win is late consolation for parent company IPG, which saw the business won, then lost, through DraftFCB.

Additionally, GlobalHue, based in Southfield, Michigan, will provide African-American creative; Los Angeles-based IW Group will provide marketing programs focused on the Asian-Pacific American consumer; and Houston's Lopez Negrete will lead Hispanic creative.