DDB makes the best of a bad job in New York with adam&eveDDB takeover

Omnicom’s DDB is rolling its New York office into adam&eveDDB, the offshoot of the high-flying London agency but one which has hardly set New York alight since launching about five years ago.

The new office will be led by Caroline Winterton who has joined from Digitas.

DDB, the quintessential NYC agency in the Mad Men era, is now mainly based in Chicago. Under co-founder Bill Bernbach it produced seminal ’60s and’70s advertising including VW’s famous ‘Lemon’ and ‘We Try Harder’ for Avis.

DDB global president Alex Lubar and A&E CCO Rick Brim have been wheeled in to help but DDB, alongside other holding company creative networks, including Omnicom’s BBDO and WPP’s raft including VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson, are struggling to retain the eminence they once enjoyed (Wunderman is big in ecommerce.)

Sooner or later, one suspects, there will be Omnicom creative (not the most inspiring moniker), Publicis Creative and all the rest of it. WPP Creative now, in effect, pitches for big accounts including, latterly, John Lewis Partnership in the UK (unsuccessfully.)