Alliance & Leicester reviews 30m marketing after appointing Carat

Alliance & Leicester (A&L) is to review its £30m marketing budget and strategy following the appointment of Carat to its consolidated media planning and buying account.

The bank says it will look at where the budget is spent and on which media. It is not known if the bank is considering changing the overall marketing budget.

A spokeswoman for the bank says the evaluation will consider everything from television spend, press and sponsorship to direct marketing and online budgets. She says: “[A&L] is a very serious player in media buying. We are going to look at all our media spend from the bottom up.”

A&L spends £14m a year on advertising, according to Nielsen Media. The remainder of the £30m is spent on on promotional activity, such as inserts, and online search activity.

Carat, incumbent on the press buying business, scooped the consolidated account from MediaVest Manchester and search marketing specialist Latitude, as revealed in today’s Marketing Week.

Undisclosed non-roster agencies also pitched for the business, which went up for review in July and was overseen by head of marketing communications Lesley Vernon.

Publicis-owned MediaVest Manchester, is incumbent on all of the planning business, television buying, direct marketing and inserts, which accounts for about two-thirds of the ad spend. Carat won the press buying business from MediaVest Manchester in December 2004. MediaVest Manchester was first appointed in 2002 while Latitude has worked with A&L for six years.