- Della de Lafuente

NEW YORK Nissan North America has named Omnicom Group Hispanic shop Dieste Harmel & Partners, Dallas, to handle the multicultural marketing business for its Nissan and Infiniti brands following a review, sources said.

Nissan spent close to $35 million in 2007 in domestic Hispanic TV alone, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. (The client's Nissan and Infiniti brands spend a combined $1 billion annually in domestic measured media.)
 
Duties are said to include creative, media planning and buying for the U.S. Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American markets, per sources.
 
The automaker put the multicultural business in play in early March, hiring Chicago-based consultancy Jones Lundin Beals to manage a review that would "maximize synergies and efficiencies," in effect, combining Nissan's ethnic-targeted marketing initiatives under a lead agency.
 
Finalists are said to have included Hispanic shops Lopez Negrete Communications, Houston, and incumbent, Marca Hispanic, Coconut Grove, Fla., which previously handled Hispanic duties for Infiniti.
 
Lopez Negrete confirmed via an agency representative that it teamed up with Asian shop AAAZa, Los Angeles, and African-American shop, E. Morris Communications, Chicago, for the multicultural pitch.
 
Incumbents responsible for existing multicultural duties were invited to participate in the review. In addition to Marca Hispanic, shops handling ethnic-targeted duties included Vidal Partnership, New York (Hispanic duties for Nissan) and the True Agency, Los Angeles (African-American duties on Nissan and Infiniti), the client said in March.
 
For Vidal, the account loss ends a yearlong string of new-business wins that has included Royal Caribbean (as part of WPP Group's integrated "teamRoyal), Johnson & Johnson and JC Penney.

Client and agency executives either did not return calls or declined comment.