:: adgruntie :: Arnold loses VW

+ Yesterday it was announced that Arnold Worldwide lost the VW account to Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Not good. The Boston ad market really hasn't come back the way a lot of other places around the country have or at least have started. And to make matters worse, Ed Eskandarian, chief executive, yesterday said the loss of the Volkswagen account will result in layoffs.

He's hoping to be able to move the majority of 100+ fulltime and partime folks who worked on the account to other accounts, but even with their recent wins of RadioShack and ESPN Mobile, I'm not sure how many jobs they can save.

The biggest problem I see for the ad biz in this area is that there are so few new accounts being won from elsewhere. A lot of accounts won in the last couple of years have only moved one account from one local agency to another. To bring back the jobs to the area and keep a balance, they need to get some big accounts from outside to maintain the balance of jobs disappearing from the large client loses. And that's just not happening.