Mumbai: Mondelez International has split its global media planning and buying business account between Dentsu Aegis Network’s media agency Carat and Starcom Mediavest Group.
Carat will now handle the account, including digital, of the maker of Cadbury chocolates and Oreo biscuits in North America, Canada, Europe and the Asia Pacific region, including India.
Sources also confirm that Starcom, which earlier had almost 60% of the global mandate, is now left with a measly 20% of the account, in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.
The changes will take effect from 1 January 2016.
A Mondelez spokesperson confirmed the news to Marketing and added that the “decision is the result of a thorough assessment to evaluate capabilities in key areas of the company’s growth strategy including e-commerce, programmatic buying and content monetisation”.
She added that centralising the company’s media operations with two core agencies offers Mondelez a significant opportunity to drive enterprise-level efficiency that can be re-invested in ong-term growth. The company claims the new structure will drive cost savings of more than 10%.
Bonin Bough, chief media and e-commerce officer at Mondelez said, “We’re excited about this next phase in our media transformation. Centralising our media buying with Aegis and SMG offers us a significant opportunity to drive enterprise-level efficiencies that can be re-invested in our long-term growth. It also enables us to build our capabilities in key areas of our growth strategy, like e-commerce, content monetisation and data-driven insights.”
The two other agencies currently doing the work for the American multinational – PHD that handled the account in the UK and Ireland, and Sam Balsara’s Madison World that worked on the account for 12 years in India – had not been invited by Mondelez for the global pitch process it launched some time ago.
In September, tvnews4u.com reported that Madison was likely to lose the Mondelez account, which according to estimates was worth upwards of Rs 500 crore in India. According to sources, Balsara was trying to form an alliance with Starcom Mediavest in India to retain the account and acquire some backend work.
“Our understanding is that Mondelez India is very happy with Madison’s performance and the dedicated team we have in place. We are currently examining the various ways in which we can ontinue to deliver our service to Mondelez,” Balsara had said in September.
