P&G appoints Starcom to handle £340m Gillette media business

Procter & Gamble (P&G) has appointed Starcom to Gillette’s $600m (&£340m) planning and buying business as it embarks on a hunt for a creative agency. The incumbent on the account was WPP Group agency MindShare.

Following US regulatory clearance for the packaged-goods giant’s $57bn (&£32bn) acquisition of the shaving products company this week, P&G handed the buying business to Starcom without a pitch.

The creative account for Gillette is held by Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO, part of the Omnicom group, which is likely to lose the business to P&G’s roster of agencies including WPP-owned Grey, Publicis’ Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi.

The packaged-goods giant was expected to move the $600m planning and buying brief out of MindShare, after the agency won the &£700m planning and buying business for arch-rival Unilever.

At the time, P&G’s global media and communications manager Bernhard Glock said he would never work with a Unilever agency (MW March 10).

The agency review follows the US regulatory clearance for P&G’s acquisition of Gillette (which includes the Braun, Duracell, Mach 3 and Oral-B brands), which will result in the creation of the world’s largest consumer goods company.

The Federal Trade Commission gave its approval on condition that the company sells a number of businesses, mainly Gillette’s Right Guard deodorants and its Rembrandt tooth-whitening business.