HHCL loses £13.5m AITC business

The Association of Investment Trust Companies (AITC) has dropped HHCL & Partners as its creative agency on the £13.5m above-the-line account.

The Association of Investment Trust Companies (AITC) has dropped HHCL & Partners as its creative agency on the £13.5m above-the-line account.

AITC members have voted to drop the Association’s “Its” campaign in favour of below-the-line activity, including an investment trust magazine and consumer fact sheets. However, HHCL will be used as an adviser on branding.

Daniel Godfrey, director-general of AITC, says: “It wasn’t set in stone that we would continue the campaign. We built a platform with it and feel the time is right to focus on other forms of marketing.”

HHCL won the account in July last year from Radical, a consultancy set up by former Young & Rubicam chief executive, Tim Lefroy.

But Radical’s campaign, with the strapline “Its for everyone”, was not well received by some AITC members, many of whom argued that television was not an appropriate medium to convey the association’s message.

Independent research by Friends Ivory & Sime showed that 84 per cent of TV viewers had no recollection of the HHCL ads, which encouraged people to stop having fun and concentrate on their finances.

The AITC was established in 1999 with the aim of persuading consumers to put their cash into investment trusts, which have not been as widely accepted as ISAs and PEPs.