Myer calls creative pitch two years early
With the battle for Myer’s media business down to a two-way fight between PHD and incumbent Ikon, the retailer has today fired the starting pistol on a creative agency review.
The business is currently held by Badjar Ogilvy and comes despite the company announcing a three year extension of the relationship late last year.
A spokeswoman for Myer confirmed that last year’s deal had seen the brand commit to Badjar Ogilvy for another three years, but said the situation had since changed. She said: “We have made changes to the way our marketing is done and we thought it timely to review this. Badjar has been invited to be part of the process.”
She said the current review of Myer’s media business would be concluded within the next month.
The announcement:
Myer today announced it has initiated a tender process for its creative agency account.
All creative agencies now have the opportunity to join with an iconic brand in Australia’s leading department store and should register their interest to be part of the tender process.
Myer’s Megan Foster
Myer Group General Manager Marketing and Brand Development, Megan Foster, said this is a very exciting opportunity for the best and brightest creative agency to partner with Myer.
“Our marketing is undergoing transformational change. In response to changing customer preferences and technology, we are adapting our marketing, changing our channel mix, and moving to an in house digital model. A review of our creative agency is also appropriate as part of this process,” Ms Foster said.
Myer is pursuing the best sourcing model from a broad range of service providers and is seeking to establish a number of specialists, or one comprehensive provider, to assist in providing a range of creative services.
The creative agency services required could include end-to-end creative services inclusive of strategic planning, creative development and full pre-media execution or alternatively a single creative function (excluding digital creative and production services) or the provision of creative strategy.
Myer requests Expressions of Interest (EOI) for the provision of services for one or more of the range of creative services required. Interest must be registered with Myer by Friday 9 August 2013. The EOI will close at 9am on 26 August 2013.
Interested parties should email myer.procurement.tender@myer.com.au as soon as possible to receive more information on how to submit an EOI.
It is anticipated that the successful agency will be appointed by the end of the year.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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“The best and brightest agency”???? That’ll help a retail dinosaur like Myers. Despite all the marketing weasel word buzz phrases and transformational change cliches they’ll still end up running price and product sale based promos and borrowing some models equity to position their fashion category as the cornerstones of their positioning. All that will change will be the agency.
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Hi Retail Dinosaur,
I suspect the same could well have been said about Coles five years ago. Regardless of what you think of their creative direction, look at them now. Sometimes change really does happen.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
‘Hey Badgar Ogilvy we are pleased to appoint you for another 3 years.’
‘Gee, thanks Myer, we’ll invest in your business’
‘Sorry, we were really just kidding. All you agencies out there spend thousands on pitches, of course you can trust us’
Yeah, right.
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Not looking good for the broader STW-Myer offering as a whole. A few nervous people down at Ikon off the back of this news.
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It may well happen in other forms of retail,Woolworths similarly turned themselves around in the early nineties. in Australian department stores however history is against them. There was when there were a reasonable number of them and now there are two bith of whom have been struggling for years because they have failed to adapt to consumers needs.
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“A spokeswoman for Myer confirmed that last year’s deal had seen the brand commit to Badjar Ogilvy for another three years, but said the situation had since changed.” What can you say (through grinding teeth) about such breathtakingly crap behaviour? So much for the often talked about commitment, collaboration, and trust between clients and creative agency ‘partners.’ What an en effing joke!
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No matter how badly the client behaves you can still guarantee a tone of people will be banging on the door to work with them… M&C are sure to be at the front of a very long queue and probably well placed considering their inner knowledge of their biggest competitor.
Further to Tim’s point, it wasn’t just about the advertising – there needed to be a lot of change on the client side before we could be inflicted with the big pointy red finger (Oh and how we hate the big pointy red finger… more so because it worked).
So unfortunately, whilst the marketing team at Myer consider themselves fashionistas rather than retailers all that’s likely to change is the agency.
The biggest challenge with not accepting that you’re a retailer is that you’ll end up selecting a brand agency that struggles to understand how retailers function and how they should be marketed. But, as the client slowly realises that things haven’t changed, and they need to operating like a John Lewis not a David Jones, a rift will start between the agency and the client that will result in another pitch being called half way through the contract. And so the cycle of client agency relationships continue.
All in all I’m looking forward to watching this one unfold, fingers crossed our agency doesn’t decide to take part in what will undoubtably be a race down the same road.
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