Are winds of change blowing in favour of local accounts?
Increasingly it doesn’t seem to matter where these 20-tonne beasts end up stopping – they’re still guaranteed a bargain belly-full. The latest mega client to call a review is Unilever (following in the footsteps of Renault-Nissan, Nokia, Reckitt-Benckiser and Vodafone to name but a few). Its £3 billion global process could end up saving the FMCG company millions of euros as the incumbent networks Mindshare (which has the bulk of the business), Initiative and OMD submit costs. As with all the other pitches in recent times, the pitching networks will find some value to give to Unilever as they bid to win the account. But how does this model work? Surely, there’s only so much cost-saving to go around and only so much that agencies can give before they lose money on a piece of business? One theory is that cunning media agencies take value from smaller and more loyal clients to subsidise the outlandish offers being made in some of these fast-food, “grab it now” parades. This seems an over-s