It is an ironic end for the agency that in its heyday created 'A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play' - one of the most famous straplines in advertising history.
The agency's misfortunes can be traced back to a period of major account losses that occurred over the past two years and its demise had been widely speculated. But its disappearance will see the end of one of the longest-established brands in advertising's history.
D'Arcy's origins hark back nearly a century, when it was founded by William D'Arcy in 1906. In the early 70s it merged with MacManus, John & Adams in Detroit and Masius Wynn-Williams in London. In 1985 it acquired New York shop Benton & Bowles.
The agency's creative reputation is best illustrated by its 50-year hold on Mars' global business.
But it also created iconic campaigns such as the Tetley tea folk, and more recently, its work for Fiat, including the 'Spirito di Punto' campaign, has reaped awards.
In recent years it had also become a key agency for COI Communications, handling several high-profile campaigns including the Department of Health Nursing Recruitment and the Department for Work and Pensions Anti-Benefit Fraud.
In the UK, 2000 represented the start of the agency's faltering grasp, with the loss of Mars' Twix account to Grey Worldwide and the resignation of the Hovis business. Although the agency picked up more COI work and the Roche brand Supradyn, its only substantial win in 2000 was Alliance & Leicester's £23.8m business, which it later resigned to handle Capital One.
The loss of business continued to gain momentum over the course of 2001.
In April, it lost the Procter & Gamble Pampers account in the US to Saatchi & Saatchi. But the final blow was when Mars sacked the agency from its global roster, wiping £76m off the agency's billings - just weeks after Publicis announced its intention to acquire BCom3.
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