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General Mills boost for US agency newcomers

General Mills remains one of the US’ bigger advertisers – spending over $700m – and it’s just given a leg up to independent agencies on completion of a wide-ranging review.

Earlier it appointed MDC’s 72andSunny and Redscout to its bigger brands which include Cheerios and Yoplait. Now its added Joan, started earlier this year by former Wieden & Kennedy New York ECD Jaime Robinson and Refinery29’s Lisa Clunie to its roster along with another newbie Erich & Kallman. E&K’s founders are former Goodby Silverstein ECD Eric Kallman and Crispin Porter’s Steven Erich.

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General Mills’ Michael Fanuele says: “In looking to round-out our roster, we met with dozens of interesting agencies and were wildly impressed by the breadth of talent out there. The industry is teeming with small agencies of every variety doing really powerful work. We’re very excited to work with these three agencies. We’re confident they’ll help us crack great creative work for our brands, and they’ll do so with ambition and generosity.”

One of the problems independent agencies face with big advertisers is that, sooner or later, the network issue rears its ugly head and someone, in procurement most likely or maybe a consultant, says that you can get more for less by using one network worldwide. Which the networks are keen to echo, of course.

So it’s interesting to see General Mills taking a contrary view, for now at least.

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