Unilever has moved its global communications planning account to Mindshare from PHD without a review process and according to the sources the account will be held out of the London office.
PHD won the global communications planning account from Mindshare in 2012 after a competitive review while Mindshare is already managing much of Unilever’s media-buying globally, including the US.
Estimates reveal that Unilever’s global communications planning account is worth about $4m to $5m in fees and Omnicom’s PHD has employed in the region of 30 people on this account.
PHD also handles some of Unilever’s media-buying in a number of markets such as Australia and parts of Asia and that is unaffected by the shake-up to global communications planning.
A Unilever spokesman said,“In line with the digitisation and fragmentation of today’s consumer and media as well as our Connected 4 Growth programme, which is giving Unilever more local agility and speed, we are evolving our media agency arrangements.
We will be partnering globally for communication planning with Mindshare to increase our effectiveness and deliver greater global-to-local relevance, future-proofing our marketing communication in a rapidly changing media landscape.
We would like to acknowledge the value that PHD have delivered to our business and will continue working in markets with our current agency partners PHD, Initiative and Mindshare for local media planning and buying.”
Recently, Mindshare named Sudipto Roy as MD, team Unilever for Asia Pacific, Africa, Middle East, Turkey and Russia (AAR). Roy will be responsible for bringing the collective power of WPP to Unilever, creating a horizontal offering for the client. It also strengthened its leadership team in Malaysia with the appointment of AnishaIyer as partner, digital, Southeast Asia, Allison Chin and DebooMohanty as senior partner and Andrea Tenner as partner.
