MindShare loses grip on Kellogg

WPP-owned MindShare has lost its grip on Kellogg’s European media buying following a reversal of the cereal maker’s strategy.

Eighteen months after Kellogg consolidated its European account into the WPP-owned media buying group known as Kellogg’s Europe Media, Carat has won the business in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Eastern Europe.

The account is being reviewed with Carat and MindShare on the pitch list in France, the Benelux countries, Spain, Portugal and Italy. A decision is expected this month.

MindShare continues to handle Kellogg in the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia.

The shift in strategy, which gives greater power to local management, follows the arrival of Jean-Louis Gourbin, the new head of Kellogg’s Europe and former head of Kellogg’s Asia-Pacific.

He was brought in to replace veteran Kellogg executive Don Fritz, who resigned suddenly during a period of great upheaval for the cereal manufacturer, which faces declining share on both sides of the Atlantic (MW September 17).

In a statement to Marketing Week, a spokesman for Kellogg acknowledges “a need for greater local empowerment. Each country manager is deciding how the media buying service will be handled in each local market”.

The company denies that it is reviewing its advertising in the UK.

Recommended

Boots to launch in-store specialist skincare units

Marketing Week

Boots The Chemist is to set up specialist skincare advice units in 95 stores nationwide, staffed by trained advisors selling a range of products new to the UK. Boots has created a new umbrella category, Boots specialist skincare, comprising products which fall between beauty and pharmaceutical use. In France and the US the sector is […]

DMB&B beats St Luke’s to 3m COI brief

Marketing Week

DMB&B is understood to have beaten fellow COI roster agency St Luke’s to a 3m Government account to promote a national telephone hotline for jobseekers. Under the scheme – which may be called Jobs Direct – people telephone regional Employment service teams who give details of local job opportunities. The aim of the initiative, run […]

Dixons jeopardises BT’s lead

Marketing Week

Despite a decade and a half having passed since the privatisation of British Telecom and the opening up of the UK’s telephone equipment market to other suppliers, a new report says that BT is still in pole position in British households, with four out of five having a BT-supplied phone. But BT’s stranglehold over the […]