After Losing Quaker Oats, Is Element 79 Toast?

(MoneyWatch)  When there's blood in the water, the ad blogs will begin to circle, baring row after row of shiny white teeth. That certainly seems to be the case with beleaguered ad agency Element 79. Starting with the news on Thursday that the Chicago-based shop had lost its Quaker Oats account, there's been plenty of speculation as the outfit now seems hopelessly adrift.

Quaker Oats announced on Thursday it was beginning a review, and that Element 79 had not been invited to participate, according to Ad Age. The account, valued at $120 million, was the last bit of business still remaining from Quaker Oats' parent company Pepsi. Sibling accounts Gatorade, Tostitos, Lays, Tropicana and Propel had all already left the building. All told, Element 79 has lost a bit under a half billion in business -- $440 million with Quaker Oats factored in. AdScam's George Parker fills in some of the details in typical scurrilous fashion:

[Element 79] CEO [Brian] Williams was originally with FCB and was responsible for a lot of Quaker business, he did a deal with Omnicom and took a load of people and the business and set up Element 79. While all this was still going on, he was on FCB's payroll... But here's the pisser... The head of Quaker at the time this was going on was... William's brother-in-law! How fucking great is that?

In comments, one person going by the name of Elementary offers up what he or she has heard about the recent shakeups:

At some point, an executive at Pepsico came on board and quickly communicated that he hated Element 79. Rumors are this guy hates Chicago too. And this is when and why the wheels fell off the wagon for Element 79. Over the course of the last year or so, this guy proceeded to reassign the Pepsico/Quaker brands to other agencies. The Quaker account was simply the final piece to go. It was likely not a surprise to the Element 79 staffers. And regardless of what you may think of Williams--and the nasty comments about him are probably true--the account losses were rooted in a Pepsico executive, not an Element 79 executive.

This does seem to have the ring of truth -- Element 79 was responsible for, among other things, the iconic Gatorade tagline "Is It In You?"

Still, even if this is a hatchet job done by an exec at Pepsi, Element 79 seems to be in a bad way. News today confirming that Chris Miller, chief of digital at Element 79, would be leaving for DraftFCB, is yet more grim news for the company. AgencySpy had the scoop:

We weren't sure about Chris Miller's alleged departure from Element 79 until just now, when a representative from DraftFUCBUH informed us that he's joined them as SVP Group Management Director, Interactive.

Picture from Flickr user oskay, CC 2.0