Hornby’s m/SIX wins Sainsbury’s £60m media from PHD
And what, you may ask, is m/SIX?
M/SIX is Johnny Hornby’s media agency that sits in The&Partnership, the rapidly-growing international network of companies based on Hornby’s London agency CHI.
CHI/T&P are 49 per cent owned by WPP so m/SIX enjoys the support – and pricing deals – of GroupM, WPP’s giant media buying company. Even so it’s a surprise to see a whopper like Sainsbury’s moving into m/SIX. Especially from Omnicom-owned PHD, which is on a roll at the moment having won most of Unilever’s worldwide media business and £2bn VW from WPP’s MediaCom.
CHI handles the Argos creative account, Argos was bought last year by Sainsbury’s. It’s not clear if m/SIX handles Argos media or not. Sainsbury’s moved its creative account from Omnicom-owned AMV BBDO to Wieden+Kennedy last year.
M/SIX recently hired Alastair MacCallum from M2M, the media agency in the UK Omnicom folded to make room for its new “data-driven” entity Hearts & Science.
It’s the second big win for T&P recently, the last being the surprise coup of landing Toyota Europe from Saatchi, all £200m of it including the media – to go through m/SIX. Even before these wins m/SIX boasted that it was the fastest-growing media agency in the UK. Will m/SIX become the Carat de nos jours?
One small correction: PHD does not handle the majority of Unilever’s media business. That would be Mindshare. PHD have China and global planning, Initiative have Russia, Greece and Latam, Mindshare handles everything else.