BMP DDB picks up £35m Hasbro

Hasbro, the toy manufacturer behind Action Man and Monopoly, has moved its £35m pan-European advertising account out of Burkitt DDB into sister agency BMP DDB without a pitch.

According to Hasbro head of European marketing and development Foye Pascoe, Omnicom-owned DDB decided to bring Hasbro’s account team closer to its media business, managed by OMD UK, which shares the same building and is also owned by Omnicom. She says: “It didn’t make sense to have our creative work with Burkitt DDB and our media business with OMD.”

Moving over from Burkitt to BMP with the Hasbro brief are client services director Helen McDermott and creative director Kent Shively. McDermott was one of the original team at Griffin Bacal, which merged with Court Burkitt to form Burkitt DDB in June 2000. The Hasbro business accounted for 70 per cent of Griffin Bacall’s business in the UK. When it was first set up in the US it was originally a Hasbro-only agency.

In June, Hasbro moved a number of its key European marketing team to the US. According to Pascoe, the European team had been responsible for all of Hasbro’s product development and marketing, whether it originated in the US or a European country. To maximise resources, Hasbro decided to move all US marketing to the US and Jonathan Evans was appointed head of international marketing, with responsibility for overall global marketing strategy.

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