CIA and Bozell win 100m Mercedes media

An alliance of CIA Medianetwork and Bozell Worldwide is believed to have won over 100m of media buying for Mercedes-Benz across Europe.

The win is in addition to the Chrysler business Bozell and CIA already handled and is part of continuing discussions within the newly merged DaimlerChrysler company about consolidating media for the Mercedes and Chrysler brands.

It follows news in January that CIA and Bozell had won lead agency status in all markets across Europe except Germany (MW January 28).

This meant the networks handled negotiations with media suppliers on behalf of both the Mercedes and Chrysler brands but day-to-day media buying remained unchanged.

Sources say CIA and Bozell have now picked up media buying in all markets except Germany, which will remain with Omnicom-owned GMFO.

It is unclear what will happen in the UK. Consolidation of UK media is more complex because Chrysler is handled under franchise by Inch-cape rather than by subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler.

Simon Oldfield, Mercedes’ UK general manager of car marketing, says: “There is every intention of combining the media buying in some way because it makes a lot of sense. There have been numerous discussions about how that should occur.”

But he adds that no firm decision has been made in the UK.