Hill Holiday and Havas declined to comment. Optimedia referred
calls to Liberty Mutual, which did not immediately respond to calls
for comment.
Boston-based Pile & Co. oversaw the process. The media
and creative reviews were handled separately.
Liberty Mutual is one of the bigger accounts to go up for review
this year. The marketer spent about $160 million in U.S. measured
media last year, with nearly $70 million of that amount allocated
toward auto insurance, according to Kantar Media. This year,
between January and September, the company spent $132 million.
The company's "Humans" campaign -- which uses Human League's
"Human" song as the soundtrack --positions the insurer as
sympathetic to the fact that mistakes happen even to the most
responsible people.
Although Hill Holliday is retaining a piece of the business, the
loss of the majority of the account is a blow to the agency. The
loss is mitigated, though, by the win of Cadillac, which went to a
new Interpublic cohort of agencies, Rogue, that included Hill Holliday, Campbell Ewald and Lowe in June.
Liberty Mutual is a big win for Optimedia, which also picked up
the media business for dairy company Lactalis and German
personal-care products company SCA in recent months.