W&K and Levi split after five years : Was it a difference over direction?
After five years Wieden & Kennedy and Levi's are going their own way.
Both companies said the split was "mutual," but some reports said there were differences over creative direction.
Levi's did not say if a new agency has already been appointed.
Prior to Wieden & Kennedy, the brand worked with Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
When Wieden took on the America account for Levi's,BBH was still the agency for Europe and Asia, AdAge pointed out, though the agency completely parted ways with Levi's in 2010.
Levi's in August promoted Jennifer Sey, its senior VP of e-commerce, as global chief marketing officer, after the post had been vacant for more than a year.
She replaced Rebecca Van Dyck, who left Levi's in February 2012 for a marketing post at Facebook.
During her time at Levi's, Ms. Van Dyck oversaw the launch of the brand's first global campaign, "Go Forth."
This campaign introduced a message of optimism for places going through tough times. An original recording of Walt Whitman reading lines from his 1888 poem "America" was part of the campaign.
"We leave the partnership with the utmost respect for the brand and wish the Levi's team the best for a successful future," said Tom Blessington, managing director of Wieden & Kennedy,in Portland, Oregon.
But the campaign attracted criticism.Robert Sawyer of New York wrote that W+K/Levi’s “Go Forth” was unquestionably the worst of some very terrible work.
" In spirit and copy, it offers less an homage to Walt Whitman’s optimism or Charles Bukowski’s defiance, than a kind of plagiarism, representing not striving, questioning youth, but privileged children at play and life as recess.
"What makes this work so bad is that it is so conspicuously false; created at a moment, that can be expressed as a “crisis of youth”—the appearance of a new lost generation, one in search of different answers than those that lead to the mall."