Sun Drops Lowe Lintas

Sun Microsystems Wednesday said it has tapped Tonic 360 and J. Walter Thompson as its joint ad agencies of record, taking its $100 million account from Lowe Lintas & Partners.

The move came as a result of Lowe Lintas’s recent print ads for Sun competitor Dell, which poked fun at the “We’re the dot in .com” campaign Lowe Lintas had created earlier for Sun.

The two companies were “a natural choice to assume the lead advertising role for Sun,” said Sun vice president of brand marketing Tracey Stout.

For the past two years, the San Francisco-based Tonic 360 has handled all of Sun’s interactive work. The agency, which works only with technology and dot-com companies, will share the new offline work in partnership with the New York office of J. Walter Thompson, and its interactive unit, @JWT.

“Sun produces cutting edge products that drive today’s high intensity Internet economy,” said Tonic 360 partner Kevin Burke. “As Sun’s agency-of-record we have the unique opportunity to tell a phenomenal story, and look forward to building upon the strong working relationship we’ve developed over the past two years.”

The account change, while a blow to Lowe Lintas, is mitigated somewhat by last week’s win of ISP InterNAP Network Services‘ $25 million business.