Designate Advertising holds on to £2.5m Seeboard task

Electricity company Seeboard Energy is understood to have retained Designate Advertising to handle its £2.5m creative and media accounts, after a final four-way pitch.

The review was overseen by Shwezin Win, Seeboard’s marketing communications manager. The company declined to comment about the review.

In 1999, Designate Advertising was responsible for negotiating Seeboard’s first foray into TV sponsorship, when it became the sponsor for LWT’s weather bulletins (MW June 24, 1999). The deal lasted two years.

Seeboard is owned by American Electric Power (AEP), which is believed to be interested in selling the company to focus on its US business. The US utility was previously joint-owner of Yorkshire Electricity, which was subsequently sold to UK energy company Innogy, the parent company of npower.

London Electricity, a unit of France’s Electricité de France (EdF) is rumoured to have bid £1.5bn for Seeboard. The bid has reportedly been rejected by AEP. AEP could face heavy tax penalties if it sells the company before June 2002, due to the accounting methods it used to acquire Seeboard in early 2000.

Seeboard was privatised in March 1990 and has 2 million customers.