No joy in Austin

AdAge is reporting the split between GSD&M and BMW effective December 31st of this year. After all the changes we've seen this year, a car company leaving its agency hardly seems like news.

While several critics, myself included, have been less than complimentary about the "Joy" campaign developed by GSD&M, what makes this announcement really interesting is that according to GSD&M, it was their idea to break it off. Right.

GSD&M told a high profile client generating tens of millions of dollars of revenue for the agency to take a flying leap. So much for truth in advertising.

The other statement that got my attention is that GSD&M said there will be no layoffs as a result of the loss. Oh really?

In the agency business, you basically staff one employee for every $150,000 of revenue. So being conservative and saying GSD&M was earning $10,000,000 a year in fees from BMW that would fund the equivalent of 67 full-time employees. Either they were badly understaffed and underserving the client (a reason for the split?) or they are willing to lose a lot of money while they look for replacement revenue. I doubt Omnicom is going to let that happen.

Who knows where the account will end up. One can only hope that wherever the business lands, BMW gets back to being BMW again.