Yahoo Inc. terminated its eight-year relationship with Black Rocket Euro RSCG, San Francisco, and awarded U.S. brand advertising responsibilities to Soho Square, a WPP Group PLC agency in New York.
The agency of record title brings tasks like strategic planning, creative and integrated offline and online ad campaigns. The agency also will handle media planning and buying for the Yahoo brand and its other properties in the United States.
“Yahoo's business has grown and evolved significantly in the past several years, and the needs of the brand have also changed,” said Nissa Anklesaria, spokeswoman at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. “Yahoo felt that WPP was best able to serve Yahoo through an entity like Soho Square.”
Soho Square is expected to draw from interdisciplinary resources across the British-owned WPP's 90-odd businesses. Yahoo is its first client.
Anklesaria declined to disclose the budget for U.S. branding. She also said that agencies were not invited to pitch.
“We didn't open a formal review,” she said. “The relationship with WPP evolved out of other work that the group had done for Yahoo.”
