Mondelez has consolidated its global advertising into WPP and Publicis as it looks to “streamline” its marketing operations with the aim of improving digital ROI.
It draws to a close a creative review which kicked off at the beginning of this year.
Mondelez will now work with the two major holding companies for its global and local creative work, along with a limited number of local “guest” specialist agencies. These include VCCP in the UK, which will continue to head up Cadbury, TMA in the US, which will lead on Oreo, and BETC, which will oversee local biscuits in Western Europe.
Digitas will lead for Publicis, which has claimed the gum and biscuit categories, while Ogilvy and its sister agency David will lead for WPP. The British holding company has won the CPG’s chocolate, candy, powdered beverages and cheese accounts.
Prior to the review the brand had worked with IPG, Dentsu and Havas, as well as a number of supporting smaller agencies.
The snacks giant, which spends more than $1.5bn on advertising a year, said WPP and Publicis will work against a new creative agency model that will deliver “deeper, more streamlined relationships” to bring “consistency and maximum creativity, while operating at speed”.
It would not confirm if WPP and Publicis shops will be asked to collaborate across the business in the future.
“Our consumer-centric focus, our purpose-driven brands and our digital ambitions need a powerful agency model to support them,” said Martin Renaud, chief marketing officer at Mondelez International. “We’re creating the basis for deeper strategic partnerships that give our local and global brand teams access to the best talent and best creative minds.
“By sharing best practices and leveraging data and insights more effectively, our partners will be in a better position to deliver winning creative and digital solutions, with speed, to our global and local business teams. We’re excited about how we’re revolutionizing our marketing approach and energized about our new partnerships, just as we’re proud of the work and the partnerships we’ve built over years with our incumbent agencies.”
The changes will be effective from 1 September, though any significant handovers will be “phased in” with a planned completion date of December 2020.
Shortly before ringing in the creative changes Mondelez also overhauled its media agency roster, which also saw WPP’s GroupM and Publicis Groupe’s Spark Foundry take on the bulk of the duties.
This will be the first time Publicis agencies have worked with Mondelez on creative.
In a memo seen by The Drum, the holding company’s chief executive, Arthur Sadoun, wrote: “Mondelez was looking for a transformative, integrated agency solution that could help them bring to life their bold ambition to reinvent marketing across their multiple categories and iconic brands around the world.
“Thanks to our ability to bring together creative, media and technology, to drive personalized creative experiences at scale, we were able to demonstrate that Digitas, powered by the group, was the right partner for the next step in their journey.”
Last year saw Mondelez up its marketing spend by more than $150m, and stated it planned to maintain this level of investment throughout 2019. However, its bosses noted in February that any increase in spend would be directed towards “local brands at the detriment of global brands”.
Renaud was appointed as global chief marketing officer shortly in March 2018, following the departure of Dana Anderson almost one year before. The company restructured the marketing operation to grant the former Danone exec a supporting team of four regional CMOs.
[“source=thedrum”]