PowerGen starts agency trawl for £1m ITV weather

PowerGen is reviewing the creative account for its ITV weather forecast sponsorship.

The energy supplier has asked eight unnamed agencies to pitch for the account, which is worth about £1m.

It is not clear whether Saatchi & Saatchi, the incumbent creative agency, has been invited to repitch for the business.

PowerGen’s latest £13m corporate branding campaign, launched in January this year, was created by design agency Miller Bainbridge.

A PowerGen spokeswoman says Saatchi has not worked with the utility company “for a very long time”, but the company declines to say whether the agency has been fired.

PowerGen became ITV’s first regular weather sponsor in 1989, in a deal intended to build awareness of the PowerGen brand.

The ITV weather sponsorship includes 12 distinctive characters – called WeatherGens – that appear at the start of each broadcast and represent the range of moods of the weather.

PowerGen manager for brand and internal communications Chris Whelan is overseeing the pitch.

He says: “We want to create a new weather sponsorship that will reflective more of what we are. Since the first weather sponsorship was created, PowerGen has grown as a company.” This year, PowerGen extended its brand into financial services and telecoms.

Last month, PowerGen was acquired by German utility company Eon, in a deal worth £9.6bn (MW April 12).