Coles parts ways with UM picking OMD for its media account
One of the biggest advertising accounts in Australia is set to change hands after 12 years with Coles set to dump incumbent UM in favour of OMD.
Wesfarmers is set to move the media spend for its supermarkets, Coles Liquor and Coles Financial Services business out of the Mediabrands agency to Omnicom’s OMD, which won a three-way shoot out with UM and ZenithOptimedia.
Mumbrella revealed the pitch was in motion in January, despite moves by UM’s parent company IPG Mediabrands to head off a competitive tender.
In 2011 Mediabrands moved the Coles business to a standalone agency called MBThree, however that was short lived as the business and agency were rolled back into UM Melbourne two years later, with MBThree’s head Peter Butler named managing director of Mediabrands Melbourne and leading the Coles business.
No real surprise there.
Mediabrands have lost their mojo amd havent seen anything from D Bass that shows he knows how he gets it back. Not easy when all the good people have left
Well done OMD
What about the programmatic spend?!
Bad news for UM, hopefully OMD won’t continue to be impossible to work with as a publisher.
This is a seismic win for OMD, so congratulations to them. UM have now lost their two biggest clients in Fed Gov and Coles in the last year. Tough times indeed.
Bye bye Bakers Delight as an OMD client! Assuming that pitch will be called soon.
The boost in staff is dramatically going to change the size of OMD. I wonder if it will impact the culture, as it used to be quite a nice smaller “big” agency in that office.
Great news Margie Reid- Best in Business! What was it that UM said when you left Margs?
Great result for OMD, well done to them. Tough Times for UM and Mediabrands, loss of Coles and Fed Gov indicates things are not right at all at UM and Mediabrands.
Seems the new era of Mediabrands is not going well. They have lots of work to turn around, hope they can do it.
Well done to everyone at OMD.
I guess Coles want a media agency and not a ‘Creative Connections Agency’.
One wonders whether IPG’s recent withdrawal from the SMI pool had anything to do with this decision? Only agency in Oz now not accessing this pool data and maybe clients want their agency to have more and not less visibility into market dynamics.
OMD used to be great. Now its just a beige, talent less corporation that puts their revenue first and the client media plan a distant second. Just because you win some clients doesn’t mean you are great, it just meant they were experts at rolling themselves in glitter.