Dairy Crest review puts £5.5m Grey/AMV work in jeopardy

Dairy Crest is reviewing its £5.5m advertising account, held by Grey Worldwide and Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO (AMV), following its acquisition of a raft of spread brands from St Ivel last month (MW October 3).

Dairy Crest is reviewing its &£5.5m advertising account, held by Grey Worldwide and Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO (AMV), following its acquisition of a raft of spread brands from St Ivel last month (MW October 3).

Dairy Crest is believed to want to consolidate the business into one agency. The AAR is handling the review.

Grey is the lead agency for Dairy Crest, whose brands include Clover, Cathedral City Cheese and milk drink Frijj. In October, Uniq-owned St Ivel agreed to sell brands, including Utterly Butterly, Vitalite and St Ivel Gold, to Dairy Crest. Dairy Crest already uses the St Ivel brand for cheeses, after acquiring the licensing rights two years ago.

AMV handles the advertising for the new brands and Dairy Crest marketing director Richard Tolley is understood to want to use one agency. According to AC Nielsen, St Ivel spent &£3.5m on Utterly Butterly in the year to September 2002, but has not supported its other brands with advertising. Dairy Crest spent &£1.9m across its brands over the same period.

In June Dairy Crest launched Argento, an olive oil spread, backed by a &£2.5m advertising campaign by Grey that broke last month (MW June 7). Below-the-line agency Cord handled a sampling campaign targeting 600,000 people.

Dairy Crest claims it is the secondlargest spreads business in the UK, behind Unilever Bestfoods, which owns brands such as Olivio, Flora and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.