Verizon is shaking up its advertising roster, awarding WPP's Ogilvy its global B2B account formerly handled by Interpublic Group of Cos.' McCann.

The win is significant on several fronts, and it represents a crack in the business at longtime agency McCann and an opening for Ogilvy.

“Verizon is one of America’s most iconic brands and we are honored to use the power of creativity to impact their brand and business," Ogilvy's global CEO Devika Bulchandani said in a statement.

Bulchandani joined Ogilvy two years ago from McCann, where she was president of North America. 

Verizon is the world's largest telecom advertiser, according to the Ad Age Datacenter, and disclosed worldwide ad spending of $3.4 billion in 2021. Verizon overall ranks as the world’s 29th biggest advertiser, according to the Ad Age World’s Largest Advertisers ranking.

Verizon is also consolidating media under Publicis Groupe following the acquisition of Tracfone. All media planning and buying will now be under Publicis, including for Tracfone which was previously handled by IPG's Mediahub.

"Ogilvy has been added to our agency roster to focus on our B2B business, while we continue to work with our long standing partners at McCann on Consumer and other key business priorities," said a Verizon spokeswoman in response to multiple inquiries from Ad Age. "Following Verizon’s acquisition of TracFone, it was the right time to take a closer look at our media partnerships to ensure we’re optimizing performance, maximizing our use of data and technology across segments, and driving the ongoing efficacy of our go-to-market approaches. We will be consolidating all Verizon media planning and buying with Publicis, with whom we’ve had a long-term and very successful relationship."

Verizon has been quietly putting out pitches for different parts of its business for several months, according to several people with knowledge of the situation, and it is possible that additional assignments could be shuffled on its roster.

It is believed that the pitch team at Ogilvy, which recently won H&R Block, Audi and S.C. Johnson, was led by Chris Beresford-Hill, president of advertising for North America and Global Chief Strategy Officer Mick McCabe.

Contributing: Bradley Johnson