There has been a war of sorts going on among the media agencies in Australia to bag the media business of Unilever in the country. WPP agency Mindshare, and Omnicom’s PHD have been wrestling it out for a while now. The two agencies have been handling the media responsibilities of the consumer product company in different countries. The current market buzz is that Mindshare has won the deal to handle Unilever’s media buying and planning responsibilities in Australia and New Zealand.
Earlier this year Unilever had announced its global media review. The company is looking to tighten its media spend in the coming months and make it more focused to achieve effective ROI. In fact the company is looking to save as much as USD200 million. A Nielsen study showed that Unilever’s main media ad spend for January to June this year is already down by 23 percent at USD28.8 million in the same period last year.
Globally the two agencies Mindshare and PHD have been slugging it out, each taking away business from the other in different regions. Earlier this year Mindshare won Unilever’s USD 53 million Australian media business from PHD, while PHD got the USD3 billion global planning account from Mindshare. Mindshare still retains the huge US business of the FMCG major.
The current tussle between the two is for the media buying business in Australia. Interestingly in its latest media review Unilever has decided to consolidate media planning on a global lever, while media buying is on market to market basis.