Mother snatches £9m Castlemaine ad brief

Interbrew UK has handed the advertising account for Australian lager Castlemaine XXXX to Mother in preparation for the brand’s relaunch, to be backed by a £9m ad spend. The Belgian brewing giant obtained the marketing rights for the Australian lager brand from Carlsberg last Friday.

Mother already works on Interbrew’s Vodka Source and recently launched premium packaged spirit Boru Black.

Saatchi & Saatchi has held the Castlemaine XXXX account since the Eighties, and created the “Australians wouldn’t give a XXXX for any other lager” campaign. The media buying account has been handed to Starcom Motive, having previously been held by Zenith Media.

Carlsberg spent £113,000 on advertising XXXX last year (AC Nielsen MMS), but Interbrew plans to put £9m of media spend behind XXXX and another £5m behind Murphy’s Irish Stout, the marketing rights to which it has acquired from Heineken Ireland. Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which also works on Boddington’s, will develop a campaign for Murphy’s for later this year.

Lowe, which works on Stella Artoius and Whitbread, has been awarded the Bass Ale account and the new Labatts Cold Filtered variant.

The XXXX marketing rights deal takes effect from January; the Murphy’s deal is immediate.

The changes were triggered by Heineken’s decision to take back responsibility for UK sales and marketing from Interbrew.