Leo Burnette

INTRODUCTION

Leo Burnett Company (LB) was founded in 1935 and has become one of North America’s top full service advertising agencies with an outstanding reputation. The brand philosophy is not about advertising, brand propositions or selling products. Instead it is about people, purpose, and changing behavior. It’s about looking at the market in which people come from. In this case study LB has become responsible for global advertising and brand marketing for Forever Young (FY), a skin care product line from (Lane, 2009)(OBC) one of LB’s most important clients. However, LB’s current client relationship with OBC is at risk. The product was launched in the Canadian and Taiwanese test markets in early 2001 and the brand performed well among Taiwanese consumers but poorly with Canadian consumers. It indexed 50 against a base index of 100. It’s critical for Carmichael, the FY brand team leader in LB UK, to turn this situation around before losing the campaign and jeopardizing LB’s relationship established with OBC. (Kauffman, 2010)

PROBLEM STATEMENT

It is imperative that LB become successful in the Canadian markets to allow OBC to

move forward with the North American markets. North America is a priority for the FY brand, and the successful launch of FY to North American market is essential for a future relationship between LB and OBC. Carmichael must turn the Canadian campaign around to allow FY to continue to become a global brand. To do this she must determine the best global team structure for saving the FY brand in the Canadian market and determine if the best course of action is to centralize or decentralize this campaign.

ANALYSIS

There are several problems that were identified in this case: inefficient communication, poor relationship building, improper team work format and unstable personnel. This problem began due to the fact that the project was centralized and decision making came from LB UK instead of LB Toronto. This decision...