• by Joe Mandese , September 7, 2007

Initiative North America continued an impressive roll that began last year when Richard Beaven joined as CEO, picking up general market media and research for the U.S. Census Bureau's four-year, $200 million account. The win, which is part of a bigger team effort involving lead Interpublic shop Draftfcb, caps off a several hundred million run by Initiative this year, and also sends a telling signal about its research capabilities in the wake of several high-profile departures in that department.

The agency recently ousted long-time research chief David Ernst, and assigned those duties to Janice Finkel-Green, the head of the agency's spot TV buying group. But Initiative is believed to be casting about for a new high-profile research executive to lead the department.

The research intensive U.S. Census win, meanwhile, indicates that Initiative hasn't lost any impetus in its research capabilities, though the assignment will be handled via a cohesive array of partner agencies managed by lead shop Draftfcb, which will also handle all online and offline media planning, coordinating media activities with multicultural and specialty shops, including: Draftfcb Puerto Rico, GlobalHue, A to Sí, IW Group, G&G, Allied Media, Weber Shandwick Minneapolis, Jack Morton, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Marcom Group and Zona Design.

To coordinate these activities and ensure that Census bureau's brand message is carried across them, Draftfcb said it would utilize a work flow system dubbed "The Wheel" to manage creative, account, planning, media and data related account work.