P&G’s Fairy looks like much-needed boost for Publicis
Publicis Worlwide seems to have won Procter & Gamble’s Fairy washing-up liquid account, beating Grey. Publicis handled the business in the US, Grey outside.
This seems to be part of P&G’s drive to reduce agency fees by $500m (it claims to have saved $375m already). Presumably having one agency worldwide is cheaper. According to some reports procurement ran this operation – which implies that Publicis went in cheap – but we don’t know that.
Once upon a time the commercial airwaves were awash with Fairy Liquid ads ‘ “hands that do dishes can be soft as your face” – but that was in the good old days of two C’s in a K, with a winsome child looking on.
P&G has wrenched nearly $3bn of media business out of Publicis Groupe in the US in the past year. Media and creative are obviously different, but I wonder if someone at P&G Towers in Cincinnati has said, “come on, this is getting a bit serious.”
For as long as big clients are wedded to big agency groups they need competition. The last thing P&G, or its rivals, want is a choice of just Omnicom or WPP.