Y&R Europe picks up 25m Volvic business

Y&R Europe has scooped the £25m advertising business for Volvic following a four-way pitch.

UK incumbent WCRS, which created a string of television ads with a pre-historic theme and the strapline “Volvic fills you with Volcanicity”, repitched for the business of the Danone-owned brand. The agency pitched with European incumbent Havas-owned Arnold Worldwide network, against Saatchi & Saatchi and Y&R.

Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R will handle the business in the UK.

As with the £300m global media review announced earlier this year, the creative pitch was conducted at Danone’s Paris headquarters. Danone has continued to innovate with the Volvic brand, breaking into flavoured water with Volvic Touch of Fruit in 2002 and introducing Volvic Splash, a flavoured water aimed at children, in March this year.

The fast-growing bottled water market was worth £1.6bn last year (Mintel) and growth of eight per cent in value and volume sales is expected this year. Danone is the leading supplier in the UK, with Volvic and Evian being the market’s two main brands.

Despite this, Danone is to increase its marketing spend by more than 40 per cent in 2006 to combat increasing competition from rivals. Rival Nestlé plans to relaunch its Vittel and Buxton brands next summer and launch new water brand Aquarel at the end of 2006 (MW November 10). Early next year, Britvic plans to relaunch Pennine Spring and launch Drench, a bottled water aimed at youngsters (MW September 29).