Computer maker Dell has awarded its massive advertising account to London-based ad holding firm WPP Group, worth $4.5 billion over three years. The companies will combine to create an entirely
new marketing and communications agency with Dell as its principal client. Rumor (http://battellemedia.com/archives/004123.php) has it the unnamed shop will be based in Silicon Valley, suggesting a
digital slant. It will hire more than 1,000 employees.
The move represents a major departure for the world's second-largest computer maker, which used to have more than 800
agencies working for it worldwide. The idea was to eliminate inefficiencies, said Casey Jones, Dell's vice president of global marketing, calling the contract "unprecedented."
As part
of the initiative, the companies' will invest in an analytics tool that reports on the effectiveness of all marketing disciplines and measures them against business objectives. The challenge for both
companies will be for Dell to regain the top spot in PC sales, which it ceded to Hewlett-Packard in 2006. Last week, the computer maker reported disappointing U.S. consumer sales, causing its stock to
fall more than 10 percent.
Read the whole story at Bloomberg »