BBDO snatches 50m Duracell

By Marketing Week 8 Jan 1998 12:00 am

BBDO has won the 50m Duracell battery account in the US and Europe in a realignment out of Ogilvy & Mather. The battery maker, famed for its Duracell bunny ads, was sold to shaving and personal care products giant Gillette in a 4.5bn deal announced in September 1996. Gillette already uses BBDO as its agency of record. The decision to move the account was taken by Peter Hoffman, the new president of commercial oper-ations for the Duracell North Atlan-tic Group (comprising the US, Can-ada and Western Europe) and a Gillette veteran of the past 25 years. O&M has held the account – which currently spends about 2m in the UK and 12m across Europe – for the past three years. Duracell is one of the world’s largest producers of alkaline batteries with sales of $2.3bn (1.5bn). It was purchased from Kraft in 1988 by the leveraged buy-out specialists Kohlberg Kravis Roberts for 350m in cash. Earlier this year, Duracell’s UK division announced a 6m marketing push in the run-up to the 1998 World Cup. Its parent Gillette is an official sponsors of the tournament.