Agency Spy

Yoda Bob has pulled one of his own back into the fold — and the added bonus — it hurts one of his main competitors.

Mauro Cavalletti is returning to R/GA as executive creative director after three years at other shops, including Organic and most recently AKQA, where he was group creative director.

Cavalletti, 46, begins work at R/GA in mid-May, when it will open in San Francisco. The West Coast outpost is the New York-based agency’s third office, following its expansion to London about two years ago.

Adweek has more details:

“He’s extraordinary at creative, technology and user experience,” said Bob Greenberg, CEO of R/GA. “It’s all the things we need and want to get. He’s a real manager and can handle large clients.”

R/GA is looking at office space in San Francisco that could house as many as 80 employees, Greenberg said. By the end of 2008, the shop expects roughly 25-30 workers. R/GA has more than 600 employees in New York and 30 in London.

“We opened in San Francisco not based on business but based on talent,” he said. “Talent is the biggest issue facing agencies today. It’s the biggest open creative and technology talent pool other than New York.”

While Greenberg sees AKQA as R/GA’s main rival, he said the shop would not specifically target talent from there.

“It’s not so much the agencies but the Yahoo!s and Googles,” he said. “All the technology companies have many potential hires for us.”"

Now Bob is getting a little silly there — hiring from the Yahoos and Googles would just be fucking dumb for an agency — unless it was a straight tech job that is.  Having experience with those companies, it would be a clusterfuck if you tried to convert them to the agency lifestyle because the mentality is completely different and the client demands would cause the new people to lose their shit — quickly.

At AKQA, Cavalletti worked on several accounts, including Target, Method and Kraft. He led Organic’s user experience practice in both New York and San Francisco from 2005-06. In his past life at R/GA, Cavalletti rose from senior interaction designer to interaction design director to creative director from 1999 to 2005.

Cavalletti will initially work on Nike at R/GA, along with new clients the office acquires. He will report to Nick Law, R/GA’s chief creative officer for North America. R/GA has also landed two local clients that Greenberg declined to name — speculation has that one of them could be Levi’s.

(ed note: ok…a random high number generated there for effect …but you get what I mean)

 Seems the creative portion of Mitsubishi Motors North America is in play again — to the tune of $190 million in billings -  this time they are dumping BBDO West out of LA for the thought that there are greener pastures somewhere else yet to be determined. (They are also apparently shit-canning Omnicom’s Organic on the digital front as well.)

From Adweak:

“Agency representative Roy Elvove said BBDO would not defend: “We were aware that the contract was up and that an RFP had been issued, and decided not to participate. We will try to make the transition as smooth as possible.” BBDO added the account in March 2005.

“BBDO West has been instrumental in the revitalization of the Mitsubishi brand in North America,” said Dan Kuhnert, client evp of sales and marketing, in a statement. “However, as Mitsubishi Motors begins a new three-year plan globally, it is appropriate for us to consider new possibilities.”

BBDO has most recently produced ads tagged “It’s go time,” a shift from the automaker’s “Driven to thrill” positioning that stressed its “J-Cool” (”Japanese-Cool”) heritage.

Omnicom’s PHD handles media chores, which are not in play. 

Mitsubishi was up 9 percent in sales in 2007 to 129,000 units, per Car Concepts, on the strength of the Outlander and Galant. (Mitsubishi is down 15 percent to 16,000 units through February 2008.)”

So they have the balls to raise sales by 9% overall and still lose the account. Of course, it used to be at Deutsch out of LA as well — they of the ads that had the young adults dancing in their cars as they drove through the Shipyards in Long Beach listening to some techno-like music — but not sure what the ads have been doing lately … other than driving sales apparently — the gall of the agency to actually drive sales.