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Blow for Mother US as Burger King goes walkabout

I read somewhere the other day that the average tenure on a big ad account these days was three years, down from seven a decade ago.

When you consider all the palaver that goes into appointing an agency –  endless research, consultants crawling over the process and then the Spanish Inquisition of procurement to overcome – it hardly seems worth the bother does it?

A particularly feckless client is Burger King in the US, hardly surprising in a way as ownership of the company seems to change hands on a fairly regular basis. Now the fast food chain, which is trying to fight off Wendy’s for the number two spot worldwide, has dumped Mother as its lead agency. It only appointed the New York outpost of the British agency group last February.

Mother took over as ‘lead’ agency from Mcgarrybowen, which rejoiced in that status for about six weeks. Mcgarrybowen won the business from long-serving (and, possibly, long-suffering) agency Crispin Porter in 2011. West coast indie agency Pitch seems to be the current favourite – although that, of course, may change.

Mother’s last big campaign was for lower fat Satisfries:

It’s not great but it does the job; which is about all you can expect when the client/agency relationship is built on ever-shifting sands.

Burger King is a biggie in the US, spending between $200-300m. Mother says it won’t have to lay anyone off but the loss is undoubtedly a blow to its ambitions of establishing a solid New York business, something which has eluded most British agencies.

As for Burger King it should have probably stayed put at CPB, but that would have bee too easy wouldn’t it?

Update 9/1/14

Burger King is also reviewing its UK account, worth a supposed £9m at CHI & Partners, according to Campaign. Sure it’s true but, actually, you could write a Burger King ad review story any time and the odds are it would probably be right.

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