McDonald’s has joined the seemingly endless list of big advertisers reviewing their media spend although it seems reasonable enough as it’s its first such media review since 2003.
McDonald’s uses Omnicom’s OMD globally but now it says it wants to move to a small roster of “preferred agency brands” to reach its customers around the world.
The move follows McDonalds’ hiring off Mondelez’ Bob Rupczynski as global vice president of media and customer relationship management. And, as we know, a new client generally means a review. Most of the major holding companies are expected to participate.
McDonald’s says: “As part of our journey to build a better McDonald’s we are striving to make our marketing dollars work harder through more efficient media spending and better connections with our customers. This week we are embarking on our first formal global media review in more than a decade..with the intention of ensuring best-in-class media services and capabilities for all of our markets. Our longterm relationship with OMD remains strong, and they will be participating in this process.”
The likelihood is, then, that OMD will lose some of its business which is obviously a blow to Omnicom, the more so as it recently set up bespoke agency We Are Unlimited in Chicago to handle McDonald’s creative and media.
McDonald’s goes on: “The efficiencies gained from this move, together with funds released from our recent decision to end our Global Sponsorship of the Olympic Games, will help us strengthen our investment toward our digital efforts. Our increasing focus on data-driven marketing will create a new level of personalized value and convenience for our customers, helping to further accelerate McDonald’s growth.”
Credit to McDonald’s for coming clean about what it’s up to anyway. Trying to work out who’s winning in the media agency stakes is nigh on impossible as these things come so thick and fast. McDonald’s spends about $1.8bn on media worldwide ($1bn or so in the US) and the likelihood is that this will rise as it spends the money it’s saving on its former Olympics sponsorship.
On the face it the biggest challenge to OMD should come from Publicis Media: Publicis creative agency Leo Burnett London has won extra work from McDonald’s recently and Publicis has formed a relationship with consultancy Capgemini to work on data-based marketing for McDonald’s. WPP’s GroupM, though, will be straining at the leash after losing a number of mid-sized media accounts recently.