Sal Taibi, most recently general manager at Deutsch New York,
has been tapped to serve as president of Lowe Campbell Ewald's New
York office. He will report to Jim Palmer, CEO of Lowe Campbell
Ewald. The full-service agency will open in January 2014 -- they
are finalizing on an office space now somewhere in Manhattan -- and
it will service Cadillac as well as other yet-unnamed clients.
In fact, the merger came in the wake of a coup Interpublic
scored when a pitch team made up of Lowe, Campbell Ewald and
Hill Holliday
won a pitch for General Motors'
Cadillac business.
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"Lowe Campbell Ewald is an agency with a strong heritage and an
integrated full service offering that drives great business results
for its clients," said Michael Wall, CEO of Lowe and Partners, in a
statement. "Being able to front those capabilities out of New York
alongside the existing U.S. locations should prove an attractive
proposition for both national and international clients. Sal Taibi
is a natural choice to lead New York given his experience in the
market, the strength of his client relationships and his intimate
knowledge of Lowe."
Said Mr. Palmer in a statement: "Our New York office will
bolster our national footprint from coast to coast. With offices in
Detroit, Los Angeles, San Antonio and now New York, plus Lowe's
international talent and distribution channels, Lowe Campbell Ewald
is poised to better help clients navigate the ever-evolving global
media and marketing environment."
It will be interesting to watch how this latest experiment for a
shop to open in New York, particularly one so influenced by its
longstanding culture in Motor City, will fare. Several
Detroit-based personnel will make the move to the New York office,
Mr. Wall said.
The Big Apple has always been a tough market to crack, and
agencies -- with Fallon a famous example of a storied agency that
couldn't hack it -- have set up and closed up shop over the years
after finding they just couldn't make a presence in the city work.
Yet many are continuing to try to build out a New York presence,
both for the sake of clients and to attract talent. Among them:
Chicago's Leo Burnett, North Carolina's McKinney and San Francisco's Goodby Silverstein & Partners.