New chief marketing officer Jerri DeVard has taken the reins at ADT and hit the rewind button: she has moved the security mammoth back to Doner, eight months after the home security company hired Arnold.
"I am pleased to announce that we have decided to reignite our longstanding relationship with Doner as ADT’s lead marketing agency," DeVard wrote in an internal annoucement to ADT employees, which was obtained by Adweek. "For the past 15 years, Doner has helped us build our brand, drive acquisition, and achieve our leadership position in the marketplace."
ADT's media planning and buying and digital marketing assignments were not affected by the shift and remain at MediaCom and SapientNitro, respectively. Annual media spending is estimated at $75 million.
DeVard took over as CMO in March from Tony Wells, who spent two years in the role and was behind the move to Arnold. DeVard is known to be a "change agent" and has served as CMO for Nokia, Citigroup and Verizon.
"We ended the relationship toward the end of last year but we stayed in touch," said David DeMuth, president and CEO of Doner, a unit of MDC Partners. "We continued to pay careful attention to the brand and category. When there was the CMO change, I reached out to her and offered to get her up to speed on the brand. We talked and decided we’d be good partners again. We decided to consciously recouple.”
"Minds Eye," Arnold in Boston's first work for the company was released in January. The campaign was aimed to help shift ADT's marketing away from worst case scenarios to meeting everyday security needs.
