(image: "Lord Saatchi" aka Maurice)

M&C Saatchi is taking money to help the UK's government convince British citizens that ID cards capable of holding "the personal details of 60 million citizens — including fingerprints and iris patterns — on a central database" are a good idea.

Uh, what? The plan, known as the Natinoal Identity Scheme (cuz that's what it sounds like!), launches in November. Apparently, by 2017, everyone 16 and over will have one of the fancy cards. However, people are worried that somehow criminals and, eh hem, terrorists, could steal people's info and somehow gain access to it and do bad things.

Source

Find out WTF after the jump.

More: Saatchi's international work

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Gerry Graf bounced out of TBWA to Saatchi & Saatchi this past March to replace Tony Granger and you know how it goes. The new ECD comes in and everyone can expect a creative shake-up.

In August, Graf took CD, Kerry Keenan off of the JC Penney account and replaced her with Amie Valentine, a CD from McCann Erickson. Someone was going to have pay for the Cannes debacle and Keenan got the axe. He also pushed Ann Hayden off of General Mills. Both Keenan and Hayden said they were headed for other shops.

According to Adweek, in the last seven days, Graf has also added a creative director, Manny Galan, who will be dealing with some of the General Mills business. Manny, by the way, is also an illustrator and worked for Marvel Comics in the 90s (see example above). I love that part. The more nontraditional folk in the ad game, the better if you ask me.

Two associate creative directors were also added to work across the agency's portfolio. Chris Beresford-Hill and Nick Spahr come from Goodby.

If you have to be at work like I do (bollocks!), why not learn something, right? Here's 5 minutes from BBC Four documentary "The Rise and Fall of the Ad Man". This section focuses on how Saatchi & Saatchi came to prominence by producing election advertising campaigns for Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party during the 1980's.

You know how the BBC rolls. They can make the most boring shit hyper-fascinating. In this case, you may have heard the story before, but this particular re-telling is worth a watch.

Kevin Roberts cracks me up. I'm sorry, but boyfriend is too much. Every time I click on one of the thousands of YouTube videos featuring K-Rob something funny happens to my ears. What starts off as "The power of a brand is its lovemark and..." quietly turns into, "blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah." He's like that 4 pm Friday lecture you signed up for freshman year of college. Maybe dude at the front of the room had something super fascinating to say, but who could be bothered?

In any case, here's a tidbit that made me want to pay a bit more attention to the Saatchi CEO. Turns out that K-Rob is the USA Rugby board chairman. Jump back! How kind of cool is that? Kevin has been charged with bringing rugby into the cultural consciousness Stateside. The kick-off event will be a test match held in Denver next year. Back in 2006, he told BBC Sport that he was aiming for the USA to be playing at the 2011 World Cup. Sounds like he might get his wish.

You see, Roberts was once a rugby player himself. No, I'm not kidding. He played as a child in Lancashire and later served as the director of the New Zealand Rugby Union. Everyone's got a passion and rugby happens to be his. I'm sure that's where he learned to be such a team player. As Kevin said:

"Being part of a team has always been big in my life. In business I've always thought of myself as a coach, not a manager, and I've been able to take this attitude into every area of my life (my kids make sure of that!)"

Is SSF working? When I say SSF, I could be talking about "soft science fiction" or non-sphincter splitting fistulectomy. Never fear. I am speaking of the joint venture between Saatchi and Fallon. Remember that one? Saatchi & Saatchi and Fallon beget SSF in August 2007. Robert Senior (pictured above), one of the OG founders of Fallon, is charged along with the great and wise oh-obwi-wan Roberts (Kevin, that is). The stated mission of SSF was to fuel growth for Fallon in the U.S. and provide leadership for Saatchi in the U.K. So, is it working?

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We hear that Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK has let go 22 addies from its interactive team — out of 25. We haven't been able to confirm this number, but the alleged whittling has been attributed to Tom Eslinger (the chap in the above photo), who is the agency's worldwide creative director for interactive.

"(Eslinger) has alienated, bullied and demoralised the UK Interactive team to the extent that every senior member of the team has left, citing him as the problem," said our spy.

More after the jump.

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Things are not going well for Saatchi. The past couple of months have kept Saatchi's name fresh in our minds and not for good reasons. Losses abound; there was the fake JcP ad, and client losses and major players exiting the game.

A tipster has told us that:

"The vibe is very weird now at Saatchi LA -- people are secretive and quickly updating their resumes. I have spotted many puzzled looks and confusion with the triple whammy -- Two Venza losses and Harvery leaving"

It is never a comfortable position to be in when the office is filled with gloom and doom. I've been there. But it must be particularly hard because there doesn't appear to be a bright spot in this whole situation. It's no secret that Saatchi has been in trouble for awhile, but this recent shitstorm appears to spell disaster for them. What's next?

AgencySpy has learned more about what happened after Saatchi LA lost the Toyota Venza account to ATTIK. The account itself was lost a few weeks ago, but SLA was given a chance to get a smaller piece of Venza work, but they missed that opportunity too. At that point, their star player walked off the field.

According to sources, there were two Venza projects to be won. The larger project was the first one Saatchi LA didn't get (a few weeks ago). The second, a smaller Venza gig, was Saatchi LA's second chance (after all, they are Toyota USA's AoR) at keeping part of the new model in-house.

But just this past Monday, ATTIK won that project, too. We're told that by Tuesday, ECD Harvey Marco quit.

Sources close to the matter say his departure was rumored for months before. We're also told that there will likely be layoffs at Saatchi LA (one of the S&S empire's brightest stars...until now). But, you probably already guessed that.

Multiple sources confirm that ATTIK has indeed won a project from incumbent agency Saatchi LA. We reported this as rumor yesterday, but today we learned (thanks tip box, and others!) that the new Toyota Venza crossover work will be in the capable hands of the ATTIK crew.

Said one of our spies, "...it was drama since the project first started, and then blam ATTIK took it over..."

There is no word if Saatchi ECD Harvey Marco's resignation is at all correlated to the lost work. You'll recall that Saatchi LA is Toyota USA's AoR — and the automaker is Saatchi LA's only client.

More after the jump.

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Harvey Marco, standing ECD at Saatchi LA, is confirmed to have resigned from his role, yesterday August 5th. This according to a Saatchi LA insider.

Harvey is known for being a kick-ass creative, so the loss is most likely Saatchi's. By the way the only work that's been going on over there, in case you'd forgotten, is Toyota.

We hear the shop recently lost an unknown project to ATTIK, which despite our attempts we were unable to confirm with the ATTIK folks. Still, if true, Marco's departure could have something to do with the loss. But hey, that's just speculation.

By the way, ATTIK is the agency that surprised everyone when they won the Scion account over Saatchi in 2002. An interesting comment was made at the time of the deal, by Scion rep Brian Bolain, who "added that hiring an outside shop should not be taken as a sign of a troubled relationship with Saatchi. Toyota 'does not have any problems with Saatchi & Saatchi,'" he said.

But that was more than six years ago. Well, six years and 22 days, to be exact. Saatchi is no stranger to high-level losses like this, as you'll recall. Anyone with more info on the ATTIK "project" win can contact us at agencyspy@gmail.com, or IM/Twitter AgencySpy.

Image via Creativity Online.