JWT grabs 160m Kellogg brief
J Walter Thompson Europe has landed the entire $250m (160m) media buying for Kellogg in a groundbreaking pan-European centralisation of the cereal giant’s media operations.
JWT executive director of European media Ron de Pear and his team is understood to have pulled off the coup by putting forward the same arrangement as exists for another client Kodak – it set up a separate centralised media buying company for the business.
Kellogg’s new single agency buying group will be called Kellogg Europe Media and will handle all media buying for Kellogg across Europe. It will be wholly staffed by JWT personnel, and its board members will include JWT and Kellogg managers.
The new company will operate as a separate unit within JWT’s media operations in each country, and media volume will be added to other JWT clients in individual countries. Sources say that when the media operations of Ogilvy & Mather London and JWT London merge, the Kellogg company will also be a part of this.
JWT, which handled 45 per cent of Kellogg media buying across Europe, now handles all its business across Western and Eastern Europe. Kellogg previously had six media buying agencies across Europe, including Carat which handled 20 per cent of media buying in Germany, Austria, Russia and Eastern Europe. Carat’s work in Germany had been highly acclaimed.
Leo Burnett has lost media buying in Belgium, Portugal and Italy. French media buyer, Business, ran the account in France, and Media Planning bought in Spain.
Kellogg’s creative agencies, Burnett and JWT, will handle media planning on a country level. In markets such as France, Kellogg’s media buying will be handled by The Media Partnership in which JWT has a 25 per cent stake.
Kellogg began the review as a two-way pitch between JWT and Carat (MW March 28). It was conducted by Jeffrey Merrihugh, Kellogg’s market development director for Europe.
In the US, Ford has consolidated its entire national $1.1bn (687m) media business into a new unit at JWT, called Ford Motor Media.
