McCann-Erickson takes on £150m Capital One advertising account

Capital One has appointed McCann-Erickson to handle its &£150m global advertising account. The business will be run out of McCann-Erickson’s New York and London offices.

McCann picked up the business after pitching against Element 79 (Chicago), Abbott Mead Vickers/BBDO, Kaplan Thaler (New York), Publicis UK and Faulds Advertising (MW February 27). Capital One called a review of its business in January following the closure of its incumbent agency D’Arcy. The agency’s parent company, Bcom3, was acquired by Publicis Groupe last October (MW October 17, 2002).

McCann will develop ideas based on Capital One’s existing campaign in the UK and US called “What’s in your Wallet”. The campaign used tongue-in-cheek humour to raise consumer awareness about the Capital One brand and the credit cards that it offers.

Capital One will continue to use MediaVest for media buying and planning, and BCS for its direct marketing activities.

Capital One provides credit cards and lending products to consumers, and is one of the largest global distributors of Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Its primary subsidiaries are Capital One Bank and Capital One FSB, which together had 47.4m accounts and $59.7bn (&£37.9bn) in managed loans outstanding at the end of last year.

In its fourth quarter last year, Capital One reported a pre-tax income of $386.6m (&£245.7m) compared to a pre-tax income of $286.6m (&£182.1m) in the same period the previous year.