Mediaedge and MediaCom split £98m global Ikea task
Ikea has split its international media buying business between Mediaedge:CIA and UK incumbent MediaCom.
The business is understood to be worth &£30m across Europe and $175m (&£98m) globally.
Prior to the pitch, the Swedish furniture retailer used a number of media agencies on a country-by-country basis across the world. It is believed to have invited five of these agencies – Omnicom’s OMD, Publicis Group’s Starcom MediaVest, Aegis’s Vizeum and the two winning agencies, both owned by WPP – to pitch. Only OMD was eventually shortlisted with MediaCom and Mediaedge:CIA.
In the UK, Ikea also works with media strategy agency Naked, which was appointed in May.
It stopped working with the creative agency Karmarama in the UK earlier this year, instead choosing to use Danish agency RBLM. Karmarama had been responsible for the “elite designers against Ikea” campaign.
In recent years Ikea has been forced to adapt its expansion strategy after UK planning protocol limited large out-of-town shopping developments. The Swedish retailer is now developing a concept for city and town centres, one of the first of which will be in Coventry. It also has plans to sell own-label food products.
In the UK, the retailer reported a 15 per cent increase in profits to &£153.5m and the same percentage rise in sales to more than &£1bn for the year ending August 31, 2004.
