Hutchison 3G invites pitches for £30m media buying business
Hutchison 3G UK has started the much-anticipated pitch for its £30m media buying business.
Hutchison 3G UK has started the much-anticipated pitch for its &£30m media buying business.
Marketing Week was first to reveal that the company was seeking agencies to help it launch a third-generation mobile phone network in the UK (MW July 6, 2000).
A brand name for the network, which will launch in the second half of next year, has yet to be unveiled.
The media pitch follows the appointment of TBWA/London as creative agency. TBWA pitched against HHCL & Partners and Delaney Lund Knox Warren for the business (MW August 30).
Hutchison 3G has yet to appoint a marketing director and is using the services of former Orange Group marketing director Lisa Gernon as a consultant. Head of marketing and communications Yael Voda is understood to be overseeing the media pitch.
Hutchison 3G UK is 65 per cent-owned by Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, while Japan’s biggest mobile phone company, NTT DoCoMo, owns 20 per cent. Dutch telecoms giant KPN holds the remainder.
Hutchison Whampoa bought its UK 3G licence for &£4.4bn last year, having been absent from the UK market for only seven months following the &£20bn sale of Orange to Germany’s Mannesmann in November 1999.
