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P&G’s Media Duties Shift Marks Growing Trend

Procter & Gamble has shifted its global creative duties for the Old Spice brand from Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi to independent Wieden + Kennedy after a pitch, Adweek writes. W+K will also handle media planning and buying for the brand in North America; Starcom MediaVest Group will continue to handle media planning and buying in other markets. Billings were not disclosed, but P&G spends about $80 million on Old Spice in the U.S. alone, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

The move marks a mini-trend of big marketers moving media accounts back to brand agencies, Mediapost points out, noting that the Old Spice shift took place on the same day that DirecTV pulled its $200 million media account from Omnicom’s OMD and bundled it with creative at Interpublic’s Deutsch unit. Interestingly, the losing agencies in the current trend - OMD, SMG, among others - are considered best in class among media agencies.

This may indicate big marketers are growing concerned about the fragmentation of media and media strategy from the brand agencies that are crafting their advertising messages. It follows the unbundling of big agency media departments into freestanding media services shops, which has caused mass consolidation in the world of media planning and buying in the last decade or so, the Mediapost article states.

While a P&G spokesperson said that the shift of media planning to the creative agency is only a test, the company hopes that it will lead to a more innovative approach to brand building and something it can extend to other brands.