Michael Roth of IPG: Team Ignite has the strength, experience and creativity to serve Harley-Davidson

Following a competitive review, Harley-Davidson hired a newly created Interpublic Group unit named Team Ignite to handle creativity, media and digital. “Team Ignite has the strength, experience and creativity to help Harley-Davidson grow demand and build on their substantial market leadership position. It’s a great example of the open architecture model we’ve championed at IPG for over a decade” said IPG Chairman and CEO Michael Roth in a statement. For the review, which was supervised by Accenture, Harley only invited holding company teams, said Shelley Paxton, VP-global marketing and brand at Harley-Davidson. “We were not looking at the key disciplines in silos,” she said. “Creativity, digital and media, in my view, absolutely has to be a single strategy to live together in this day in age.” Team Ignite will be led by Kevin Wertz, Campbell Ewald CEO. With this new move, Harley is ending its relationship with boutique advertising shop Wolfes, based in Minneapolis. The shop co-developed the creative for the Live Your Legend campaign with Harley’s in-house marketing team. Publicis Groupe’s Starcom and Digitas are also no longer on Harley’s agency roster.