Leagas Shafron resigns Vax brief

Leagas Shafron Davis is understood to have resigned the advertising business for Vax, the company which makes powerful vacuum cleaners and cleaning solutions.

The agency won the creative account in 1994, when the business was reported to be worth 3.5m, and picked up the media account two months later.

It devised a campaign set in Times Square in New York, where a square of white carpet was subjected to the filth and litter of the city and then salvaged by the cleaning abilities of a Vax machine.

Sources say Leagas Shafron, which beat five agencies including incumbent Kelly Weedon Shute to the creative account, will work out its contract with Vax.

But Vax’s group marketing controller Julie Haney denies a split is imminent, or that the company is speaking to other smaller agencies. “We are always in touch with a variety of different agencies,” she says.

Vax’s advertising budget now stands at about 200,000 (Register-MEAL), but the company denies the spend has been cut since Leagas Shafron won the account.

Haney says Vax advertises every week in the national press and may appear on TV later this year.

The company has suffered intense competition from rivals such as Electrolux and Hoover and was forced to cut 65 jobs last June. Its marketing department was also restructured after the departure of its head of international marketing, Alec Douglas (MW October 13 1995).