Microsoft Taps Interpublic's Reprise As Search Agency

by Tameka Kee, Monday, Jun 25, 2007 6:00 AM ET
MICROSOFT HAS TAPPED REPRISE MEDIA to manage search marketing across its product and brand portfolio, just two months after Reprise was acquired by the Interpublic Group.
Reprise will work in tandem with IPG sister agency McCann WorldGroup, Microsoft's global agency of record, to develop and execute search campaigns that are closely integrated with current online and offline marketing strategies.
"We'll be working with McCann to improve the execution of search," said Josh Stylman, managing partner, Reprise Media. "But also to ensure that it can be leveraged as the integration point between every other piece of marketing."
The firm has just begun to analyze and tweak the search efforts for both consumer and b2b products, like Office, Zune and Vista, and according to David Grubb, Microsoft's global media director, "they have had a visible impact on our efforts already, and we're just getting started."
Reprise's next steps for Microsoft include developing search efforts for public relations and contextual marketing campaigns, as well as executing strategies designed to ultimately increase search share for Windows Live.
Stylman would not comment on whether input from aQuantive (Microsoft's pending digital agency acquisition) will be a factor going forward. But the software giant currently uses aQuantive's ATLAS technology for search tracking, and there are no plans to change that.
"We knew that Microsoft was one of the biggest accounts we would be working on," said Anthony Iaffaldano, director of marketing, Reprise Media. "And we're striving to make sure that search never becomes an afterthought in their media plan."