***Wieden+Kennedy has won Gap clothing’s global account, the first time the struggling retailer has had a lead agency since leaving Ogilvy in 2012. The company is now showing signs of life under new CMO Seth Farbman, an ex-Ogilvy manager and W+K won the business without a pitch.
It’s a timely win for W+K which lost Levi’s to a combo of Draftfcb (now FCB) and Richard Pinder’s new outfit The House last year.
It will be interesting to see if W+K London makes a contribution. W+K handles Tesco in the UK and Tesco has its own F&F clothing line and takes a stern view of account conflicts.
***Lucky Generals, Helen Calcraft’s new agency, hasn’t been all that lucky so far but it seems to be picking up and it’s handling the Labour Party’s response to George Osborne’s Budget today.
I haven’t really picked through this yet but I’d guess the Budget will be popular, certainly with right-leaning media and business.
Slippery George seems to be doing a good job of hemming Labour in. Anyway, here’s Lucky Generals’ first effort – a poster that’s also going to run on social media etc.
Doesn’t really do it, does it? We all know that ‘ordinary’ people are suffering but we also know that, by Labour’s own admission, there was ‘no money left’ when the coalition government came into power.
Good political ads are nasty and vicious and make you laugh a bit, like a good cartoon. Saatchi’s famous ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ was a classic case in point.
If Tim Bell, the brains behind that Tory campaign, was handling Labour (which he wouldn’t, of course) he’d have picked up on Ed Miliband’s jibe that there was an ‘Eton mess’ in Downing Street.
Lucky Generals needs to take the gloves off.
***Leagas Delaney, currently re-pitching for Skoda, which is quite a big one, has landed the global ad account for Penfolds wines. The business is to be handled out of London and Shanghai.
Leagas has shown that it’s good at luxury stuff over the years and so looks like a good choice for Penfolds which, 20 years or so ago, rivalled the best of Bordeaux and Burgundy with its legendary Penfolds Grange (available for £1800 per six bottles from Tesco online).
The Aussies have really buggered up their wine business by selling out to a load of mass-market beer merchants who haven’t a clue how to market wines. Maybe that bon viveur Tim Delaney can save them from themselves.
***I see that Omnicom’s OMD is reported to be have been knocked out of the pitch for Vodafone’s $600m media account, with WPP’s GroupM and Aegis left in the running.
This is hardly a surprise as WPP has its hooks into Vodafone every which way with its ‘Team Red’ operation that already handles all the creative through Grey and RKCR/Y&R.
Aegis, through big network Carat, is nearly always in these big media pitches and, now and then, manages to land one – most notably General Motors’ $3bn global account.
But WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell will want to know why, if Vodafone goes anywhere else.
Meanwhile Omnicom, and proposed merger partner Publicis Groupe, need to get their media act into gear.
