Orange to review media and DM accounts

Orange, the France Telecom company, is reviewing its £75m media business and looking to restructure its £18m DM account. The incumbents on the business are Initiative and Wunderman respectively.

The review of the media arrangement follows a restructure in 2003 when it reduced its number of rostered agencies from nine to two. Initiative currently handles media planning and buying in the UK, while Media Planning Group oversees the rest of Europe. Orange will now allow individual markets to appoint their own media agencies.

In the UK, Initiative will repitch against Carat, i-Level, Mediaedge:cia, Vizeum and Walker Media, to handle the account from 2009.

An Orange spokesman says: “Following an Orange international decision enabling local markets to select media agency partners to optimise efficiency in planning and buying across all media, Orange UK issued a request for proposal to a shortlist of potential agency partners.”

The review also comes almost a year after consolidating its entire direct marketing account into Wunderman. The spokesman adds: “We can confirm that we are reviewing the structure of our direct marketing agency relationships. Whilst Wunderman remain our agency of record for all direct marketing campaigns, we have initiated contact with some other agencies for potential project work.”

Wunderman, previously called Harrison Troughton Wunderman, was appointed to the business at the end of June last year following a competitive pitch against Chemistry and incumbents WWAV Rapp Collins and Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voelkel.