Let's start the morning/week off in true espionage fashion. We hear Campbell-Ewald dropped out of the Farmers Insurance review, albeit a couple weeks ago. Recall that we told you about the review a while back. What we didn't (and couldn't) know then was that the agency's relationship with the client wasn't exactly lovesy-dovesy. Know what I mean?

Scuttlebutt is, according to our source, "(CE) finally came to the stunning realization that Farmers was actually not interested in them, and they dropped out. There was (ed's note: allegedly) an incident in which they were going to present, and Farmers postponed it at the last minute, and that was the last straw."

"There was (IIRC) a party to celebrate winning some minor business at GM, and at the same time, they made an announcement that they were dropping out of Farmers. Which effectively means that the LA office will close (all the Kaiser work is now being done out of Detroit anyway)."

The last part coheres nicely with a tip we received (and kinda poked fun at) last week, which plainly read, "campbell-ewald la". Thanks to today's second source, we were able to fill out what (could be the part that) was missing from the earlier Holmsian clue. That is to say, unless there's something else going on at CE-LA that we haven't yet heard about. E-mail me at matt@mediabistro dot com to fill me in.

More: "How Campbell-Ewald Really Lost Farmers and May Lose More"