Burger King moots £11m review out of Lowe Lintas
Lowe Lintas may lose its grip on the £11m Burger King creative account after it was revealed that the fast food giant has been talking to other agencies about its UK business.
Agency sources say Burger King has been working with Agency Insight and that the fast food chain’s marketing director, Philip Almond, has talked to a number of undisclosed creative agencies.
Almond joined Burger King UK & Ireland in August last year from United Distillers & Vintners, a division of Diageo, which recently merged with Guinness, where Almond was brand director for Smirnoff.
Speculation about a shake up of Burger King’s international marketing operations has been rife since the appointment in April this year of Chris Clouser as global marketing officer.
Clouser, who joined as part of a management restructure instigated by chief executive John Dasburg, has overall responsibility for creating and implementing international marketing strategies.
A spokeswoman for Burger King in the UK says: “There has been no decisions made to review the advertising agency.”
In January, McCann-Erickson in New York won the $400m (£280.7m) US creative business for the burger giant from Lowe Lintas. At the time the company said it was “too early” to say how the move would affect other agency relationships, although it admitted that the management restructure could result in US-produced ads being used in other markets including the UK.
