Pitch Watch: Volkswagen moves from Mediacom; Cancer Council names creative agency; Maui Jim appoints media
Mumbrella casts an eye over the major media, creative and public relations pitches at play in market.
In today’s wrap up: Volkswagen (media account move); Cancer Council (creative account move); Maui Jim (media account move).
Volkswagen moves from Mediacom to PHD
In a major global realignment announced overnight, car manufacturer Volkswagen is to move its business to media agency PHD globally.
The move is understood to affect Australia where Mediacom currently holds the account which includes not only the $35m Volkswagen account, according to Nielsen, but also the car maker’s other major brands including Audi, Bentley, Porsche and Skoda.
It is the latest of the ‘Mediapalooza’ pitches kicked off last year by some of the world’s biggest advertisers to come to a head. It is understood Mediacom did not represent the Bentley and Porsche brands locally.
PHD Australia would not comment today but M&M Global noted that the pitch, globally, was worth some $3bn and ends an 18-year relationship with Mediacom that started working on the VW business in Germany in 1998. IPG Mediabrands is also understood to have been involved in the pitch process.
“New digitalisation possibilities and new ways of targeting specific groups are to be put to much greater use in media planning,” said VW in a statement.
“The media holding of the Omnicom Group stood out against the competition and convinced all the Group brands involved by providing trend-setting impetus in media management and a broad-based, strategically sound service range.”
M&M quoted Omnicom insiders who claimed the addition of VW globally will be “transformative” for PHD.
Cancer Council names new agency to roster after competitive pitch
The Cancer Council in Victoria and Cancer Institute in NSW have awarded a joint project aimed at stopping people from smoking to Three Wise Men.
The agency succeeded in the competitive pitch against a number of Sydney and Melbourne agencies and will work on the campaign scheduled to launch in 2017. Randal Glennon, managing partner at Three Wise Men, said the issue was a perfect one for the agency to take on.
“This is a tremendous appointment for us and right in our behavioural change sweet spot.” Glennon said. “Motivating smokers to quit is a tough challenge, but one that we’re absolutely delighted to take on.”
Amy Collie, marketing manager prevention for Cancer Council Victoria, said the agency had shown a fresh approach to a significant challenge.
“They showed a really good grasp of the problem and had impressive ideas for solving it. But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised given their outstanding track record with social marketing campaigns,” Collie said.
The campaign will be staged to build over the next three to four years.
Nunn Media appointed to Maui Jim media account
Independent media agency Nunn Media has been appointed to do the media buying for sunglass brand Maui Jim, Mumbrella can reveal.
The appointment comes after a competitive pitch with Vizeum as the incumbent.
The business was previously handled by Vizeum. Maui Jim are increasing their investment into Australia and will be investing up to $5m into marketing, of which paid media will make up a significant part.
Nathan Fisher, Maui Jim’s marketing director for APAC & Middle East said: “We have very aggressive business growth goals for Australia and look forward to working closely with Nunn Media to achieve these.
“We selected Nunn Media for 3 reasons – we felt the strategy they presented was best placed to engage our target audience and drive the business results we are hoping to achieve. Culturally we feel they are very well aligned to our business, and finally the quality of the people in their team was stronger than that put forward by other competing agencies”.
Nunn Media declined to comment.
What clients do Mediacom even have left?
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So that’s Unilever, GSK, and now VW all crossing the bridge from GroupM to PHD….
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Oof – Mediacom cannot catch a break. That is going to hurt.
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