The Irvine office of New York-based Young & Rubicam Brands is going to have more time to play with girly toys in coming months.
The ad shop, part of Britain’s WPP PLC, has added creative duties for El Segundo-based Mattel Inc.’s girl toys such as Polly Pocket and Disney Princess and the Radica line of computer and video games, according to trade publication Ad-week.
The additional work also includes Beauty Cuties, Holly Hobbie & Friends and Walt Disney Co.’s “High School Musical” figurines.
Y&R already handled creative duties on Mattel games and boys toys including Hot Wheels, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” figures and DC Universe action figures.
The girl toys work previously was handled by the Culver City office of New York-based Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Inc., also part of WPP.
The shift occurred after Mattel considered both Y&R and Ogilvy for the consolidated assignment, according to Adweek.
Ogilvy retains creative duties on Barbie.
Y&R declined to comment on the status of the new work, though sources close to the shop confirm the additional work.
Mattel spent about $30 million in marketing for the first half of this year and more than $185 million in 2008, according to Netherlands-based Nielsen Co.
Y&R’s Irvine office had $370 million in 2008 capitalized billings—a measure of revenue for ad agencies—making it the top agency in the county.
The work is expected to add about $30 million in billings for Y&R.
It’s a big win for the shop, which saw the loss of one of its biggest accounts last year along with a decline in marketing budgets.
The shop lost its New Jersey-based Land Rover North America Inc. account in December to Y&R’s New York headquarters.
Land Rover spent about $110 million on advertising last year and had been the shop’s last remaining auto account.
The shop has won other work.
In March, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. hired Wunderman, the interactive arm of Y&R, to handle a massive overhaul of Rapid Rewards, the airline’s frequent flier program.
Last month, Irvine-based Toshiba America Information Systems Inc.’s laptop division ratcheted up its marketing with a new branding campaign to include TV and print ads, which Y&R is handling.
Kia Goes Underground
Irvine-based Kia Motors America Inc. is taking a page from underground music and scheduling a 10-city music tour for its top selling crossover, the Soul.
The automaker, part of South Korea-based Hyundai Motor Co., has been actively reaching out to younger drivers interested in its crossover sport utility vehicle.
The tour, called Kia Presents the Soul Collective, will feature events, test-drives, multimedia displays of artists’ visual and audio work and live performances by local bands in 10 cities.
The tour is set to visit Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. It starts this month and ends in late October.
The automaker will be taking over abandoned warehouses in the cities to keep with the underground music theme.
Kia plans to have street teams in the target cities handing out postcards and posters to promote the event.
The automaker also is getting the word out through local media outlets and online at Twitter, Kia’s Facebook page and on Kia.com.
The tour Web site, KiaSoulCollective.com, will host information on the artists attending the events along with digital samples of their work, test-drive registration and tour updates.
“Appealing to the youth market is important to Kia Motors and we feel that the perfect way to do that is through custom and visually appealing promotions,” said Michael Sprague, vice president of marketing at Kia.
Kia has been pushing the Soul to the youth market in other ways.
The automaker and Time Warner Inc. unit Cartoon Network LP’s Adult Swim, a late-night block of shows for grownups, hooked up for a contest in May to give away a Soul painted with characters from Adult Swim’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”.
This April, it promoted the auto with Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 and Xbox Live as part of a video game marketing campaign.
In June, the automaker gave away a Soul as part of a promotion with Switzerland-based Fédération Internationale de Football Association at the FIFA Interactive World Cup finals video game competition in Barcelona, Spain.
The company sold more than 4,500 Souls in July.
“The Soul has really opened up a new demographic for us as a brand and it is really serving as a platform for growth for us,” said Tom Loveless, vice president of sales at the automaker.
Most Gets Into Character
Aliso Viejo-based Most Brand Develop-ment & Advertising and Chicago-based National Association of Realtors have produced a segment for USA Network’s “Character Fantasy” program, which allows everyday people to transform into characters they dream about.
The ad shop filmed Steve Goddard, president-elect of the California Association of Realtors, who gave everyman Tony Franchitto a crash course in the residential real estate industry, including a mock home showing complete with real buyers.
The segment is scheduled to air Sept. 12.
The ad shop recently launched a $14 million campaign for the National Association of Realtors promoting the $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit.
