DDB Colombia rode one bank for 20 years — losing it nearly closed the agency

DDB Colombia had run Bancolombia's advertising for more than two decades, building the bank into one of the country's most recognised brands. The relationship closed in December 2016 with an anthology film called 'Más fuertes juntos' ('Stronger together') — a fitting title for a partnership that was, by then, over.

The account had been worth roughly a quarter of the agency's revenue. Its departure landed on an agency that had already posted six straight years of losses, from 2010 to 2016, and had shrunk to the edge of shutting down. Losing its single largest client on top of that run was close to a knockout blow.

DDB's global network sent in Borja de la Plaza, a Spanish executive who had been working for DDB in the United States, as president and CEO in November 2016 — the same month the Bancolombia relationship was ending. He inherited an agency of 350 people built almost entirely around servicing one account for two decades.

De la Plaza spent three months surveying every level of staff through PricewaterhouseCoopers, then six months restructuring: he lowered the average age of leadership from 45 to 36, hired for digital skills across departments that had none, and rebuilt client-facing teams around agile methods instead of the account-service model Bancolombia had run on for twenty years.