Visa named TBWA Worldwide, an Omnicom communications company, as its global lead strategic and creative agency following a thorough review of Visa’s incumbent agencies against BBDO Worldwide, WPP Group and Publicis Groupe. The global ad budget pegged at $600M has the largest proportion of spend going to US accounts. TBWA\Chiat\Day handled the US Visa account since 2005.
The agency consolidation which takes effect January 1, 2009, is expected to deliver creative synergies and other operating and cost efficiencies to Visa.
Antonio Lucio, chief marketing officer of Visa Inc. said in a statement, “As Visa has evolved into a global public company, we challenged our agency partners around the world to provide a unified approach to our marketing initiatives,” and adds, “This decision reflects the creative strength and innovation of TBWA Worldwide as well as their ability to deliver against Visa’s unique brand vision.” 


Last month Visa released a TBWA-created ad in the US celebrating Michael Phelps’ record-breaking achievement of winning 11 Olympic gold medals.
In Asia, the BBDO network had a strong hold on Visa business. Chris Thomas head of BBDO Asia told adobo, “For Visa in the region, we (BBDO) got the best business results by market. In every market in 14 countries. We got our highest relationship scores in seven years!” On the break-up Thomas adds, “It was disappointing. There is a lot of sadness amongst good friends, our clients and in the agencies. We have done great work. We will keep working closely with Visa on certain things but I am glad it stayed within the (Omnicom) family but we are very disappointed we lost it in Asia.”
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