Saatchi & Saatchi

Sources familiar with the matter confirm that after a year or so of service, Bob Wiesner is no longer regional talent director at Saatchi & Saatchi Americas. Wiesner, who was based out of the agency’s New York office, kicked off his career at Hanes Corp, working with agencies such as DDB and BBDO along the way. Wiesner also launched his own consultancy called Executive Persuasion Group along the way. We’ve been told by sources that a search for his successor at Saatchi is underway.

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Oh, let’s bring it, strut, shuffle and all with a new campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi London, which gives us the “James Brown Challenge.” The goal of the agency’s rather formidable effort is to meld filmmaking and music while also celebrating the man that serenaded Apollo Creed in Rocky IV. Damn you, Drago. For those interested, you have four tracks from the godfather of soul to choose from, create a full-length video around it and June 25 to complete it. Saatchi is no stranger to the music mashup game, as we call recall the agency’s efforts to promote Moby last year.

Here’s some thrilling mid-day news for you. It’s been announced that the agency formerly known as Saatchi & Saatchi Healthcare Innovations has now been given a more succinct, perhaps catchier name: Saatchi & Saatchi Science. Despite the rebranding and “new direction,” the agency unit, which is based in Yardley, PA and housed under the Publicis Healthcare Communications Group umbrella (home to Digitas Health as well), will continue to be led by managing director Annemarie Armstrong.

As part of the rebranding, the 25-year-old Saatchi  Saatchi Science will be “refocusing its business to work exclusively in complex specialty categories.”

Word on the Spy line is that Thierry Dumoulin, managing director of Saatchi & Saatchi X’s New York office, is no longer with the agency. Phone calls are leading to broken extensions and sources are saying Dumoulin’s departure leaves no one officially in charge at X NYC. Anyhow, Dumoulin has held the MD title for two years at the New York office of Saatchi’s shopper marketing unit.  Prior to his gig at X, the exec spent two years at JWT London as an international account manager and six after that as director of client services at fellow UK operation, Imagination.

From Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi LA comes a new YouTube campaign for the Prius c, a digital experience hailed by the agency as the “first and only YouTube-based car configurator to exist.”

Last month, Toyota debuted a TV spot comparing the game of life to, well, the board game LIFE, emphasizing how the Prius c’s fuel-efficiency helps young car buyers take their lives to the next level. Now, Toyota has debuted a new LIFE-themed YouTube channel, where celebs give young Gen Y-ers car-buying advice including how to balance one’s budget with a vehicle purchase, calculate MPG, and the tech advantages of the Prius. Making a cameo appearance in a video called “Wallet Wisdom” (above) is Danica McKeller, the limber mathematician best known for capturing the hearts of Gen Y with her role as “Winnie Cooper” on The Wonder Years.

Also appearing to talk about the Prius c’s “Touch Tracer Display” is a man known to the world as “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” who made learning an absolute kick-ass experience for 90s Saturday morning TV viewers. So, why all the celebs of yesteryear? Referring to the YouTube campaign, Saatchi LA says in a statement that “the core demographic for the Prius c is made up of city-dwelling professionals in their 20s and 30s who lead extremely busy lives. And although they don’t spend time checking into Foursquare to unlock deals or viewing long-format content from their phones, they are ‘social shoppers’; and often look for tools that help them easily share and collect opinions. Saatchi LA also found that the Gen-Y set, who are artistic and creative in nature, are turned off by the standard, clinical car configurations of today that feature stale drop-down menus, constant pricing per feature and standard 360 car spins.”

Aside from YouTube, the campaign will also be shared over “this generation’s favorites,” Google+, Twitter and Facebook. View the Prius c interactive YouTube page here.

After a near six-year run that eventually culminated into a role as group creative director, Matt Kuttan is no longer with Saatchi & Saatchi X, the shopper marketing division of the familiar agency brand that let go of its chief exec a few months ago. Prior to joining X, Kuttan served as creative at at Publicis-owned Burrell. One tipster quipped that Saatchi & Saatchi X was “soon to [b]e renamed eXit!” Someone cue Ed McMahon and Doc Severinsen.

Nearly a month after “parting ways” with JCPenney, Saatchi & Saatchi NY has let go of some staffers. The agency wouldn’t say, though, if the cuts were directly related to the account loss, but just that they were made in order “to align costs with revenue.” Tipsters have been giving us numbers anywhere from 25-35, but the official word from the Lovemarks Company’s NYC branch is that five percent of its workforce was affected across creative, account and planning.

If his LinkedIn wasn’t enough to confirm it, a phone call cemented the fact that Saatchi & Saatchi X chairman Andy Murray is no longer with the agency that he helped found nearly 12 years ago. Spies are claiming that Murray was “ousted” from his post (though his name and frame are still on the agency’s worldwide creative board page) and that we can expect more management transitions at X in the near future. But anyhow, it appears that Murray is now turning his attention to his Arkansas-based “entrepreneurial technology incubator” dubbed Mercury11.

In 2010, Murray was replaced by Walmart alum Dina Howell as CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi X, the shopper marketing divisi0n which was formerly known as Thompson Murray until it was acquired and re-branded by “The Lovemarks Company” in 2004.

Since JCPenney added Minneapolis-based Peterson Milla Hooks to its agency roster over a month ago, some were wondering where this move would leave Saatchi & Saatchi NY, which has exclusively handled creative duties for the brand for the last five years (who can forget “Beware of the Doghouse”). Well, over the past week, we’ve received a few tips from different sources claiming that the retailer has indeed parted ways with Saatchi and that the parties involved are just keeping things quiet.

We reached out to JCPenney the minute we started hearing these grumblings on Dec. 20, but have yet to hear a peep from the brand or Saatchi for that matter. Well, it is the holidays after all, but considering that JCPenney’s new management brought PMH on board and changed PR agencies in just a month’s time, would a split from Saatchi seem all that shocking? Hopefully we’ll find out whether the relationship’s intact or not as we head into 2012. OK, back to autopilot mode.

Update: Well, they’re keeping quiet no more as a JCPenney spokesperson tells us, “Both jcpenney and Saatchi mutually decided to end our relationship.” According to tipsters, the creative account is worth something to the tune of $400 million, though we’re checking with Penneys on that.

Perhaps taking a cue from John Cusack in High Fidelity, “The Lovemarks Company” known as Saatchi & Saatchi is giving the gift of music (in lieu of, you know, the usual booze and other goodies) to its clients this holiday season. The Publicis Groupe agency plucked musicians and bands from within its global network and asked them to come up with original tunes for a double album and the result, we’ve been told, is a compilation that spans genres ranging from dance and folk to bhangra and ska.

Those on Saatchi’s list will soon receive an email with a link to the free, downloadable album, a personal message from Kevin Roberts and a digital booklet containing info about the artists within. If you’d like a taste of what you’re in for, clients, peep the album’s lead track, “Cosmos Baby,” from Russian band The Don’t Tell here and expect a music video for the track soon.