The Media Store earlier this year parted with its foundation client Toyota back after 24 years.
And the agency took full page ads in the AFR and Go Auto to thank Toyota and acknowledge the long relationship.
The ad: "We wanted to acknowledge and celebrate one of the most successful partnerships in Australian advertising history. The association between our two great brands has been characterised by our joint commitment to trust, innovation and performance.
"For The Media Store, this is a time of positive reflection and we are proud of the great work we have produced and the results that have helped Toyota become one of the best loved brands in the country. We send everyone at Toyota our warmest wishes for the future as we continue on our respective roads of success."
The Toyota media account went to Publicis Groupe after a review. Toyota paid tribute to the incumbent agency, “The Media Store (TMS) has been a trusted partner for over two decades and has made a great contribution to Toyota Australia. The agency has helped build our brand to where it is today. This decision was particularly difficult and we sincerely thank TMS for their service and support.”
The Media Store CEO Stephen Leeds says agencies are renowned for announcing new account wins.
"But we felt it important to acknowledge our departing, founding client of 24 years (at TMS we do like to behave differently with integrity at the core)," he says.
"We wanted to publicly thank them for the successful partnership. We are proud of what we accomplished together (helping them shift from being a challenger brand to the auto market leader) with many of our people working on the account for 10-30 years, so it was worth acknowledging and celebrating the achievements for them too.
"Finally, we wanted to communicate that despite this account movement, The Media Store is very much open for business.
"We will take the learnings, sophisticated capabilities and systems with us to apply to new clients, who like Toyota, desire to become market leaders all whilst making a difference in the communities in which they operate."
Leeds told AdNews he's had some very positive messages about the ads.
"It is a genuine thank you publicly to a very, very loyal and great client that we probably didn't get a chance to do it because of COVID, to try and reach everybody outside of a team's call. So this was just one way, I think, to show how proud we are of that relationship and we respect that they'll move on.
'I think our other motivation was for our people," he says. "It's one of our values, people first. We had some people work on that account for 15, some 22 years.
"And because of COVID, we feel like we probably haven't truly farewelled them in the way we would normally have done. Also, pretty conscious that they're now in the market. Some have got jobs, some are going to take some time off, but I want them to be able to go to the market proud of the brand they work for.
"And we wanted to present our credentials to a broader market that we are well and truly open for business. They were the motivations behind the ad.
"Any good marketer will tell you that there's the long term and the short term. I don't think we were necessarily expecting the phones to start ringing straight away.
"I did receive a couple of emails that I was very heartened by and it validated our decision. People praising us for being mature, adult-like in a world where most clients and relationships once they break up there's probably not nice pleasantries.
"Stay tuned. There's a couple of announcements we'll make next month. We've been busy over the last 12 months increasing our pipeline and we will make some announcements next month."
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