Shell to review £100m media
Oil giant Shell is to review its global media planning and buying account, worth more than $200m (£106m), in an attempt to consolidate its roster.
Shell’s global roster includes UK incumbent MediaCom, which handles media for Europe; Maxus, which handles Eastern Europe; J Walter Thompson, which handles print and internet businesses in the US and Canada; MindShare, which handles TV broadcast in the US; and Starcom MediaVest, which holds the Jiffy Lube account. The Shell business is worth £5m in the UK.
A shortlist of agencies will be invited to pitch for the business in the coming months with an appointment expected by July 2005.
Shell Brands International AG chairman Raoul Pinnell says: “It is standard practice for Shell to review its agency alignment on a regular basis.”
Shell was this week forced to drop a television commercial for unleaded fuel after Ofcom labelled it misleading.
The media regulator upheld a complaint that the claimed performance benefits of the fuel could not be proven to work in all cars and ordered the ad to be taken off air.
The commercial claimed the fuel could enhance motoring performance providing “extra power to respond safely just when you need it”, backed up with the slogan that it was the “only fuel developed with Ferrari”.
But citing a previous ruling made by the Advertising Standards Authority, a viewer said the claims wrongly implied that all drivers would benefit from a performance boost if they switched to the unleaded fuel, when most vehicles would see little or no improvement.
