Leading UK agency and mimi-marcoms/incubator agency Mother has gone through an interesting couple of years (it was our Agency of the Year in 2016) with, notably, Boots walking to Ogilvy via a WPP deal last year. At the same time it won KFC from BBH.
But it probably didn’t expect to lose MoneySupermarket.com, for whom its noisy ads have dominated the price comparison site wavelength for years.
But publicly-quoted MoneySupermarket, which recently missed its earnings targets, has decided on new pastures.
MoneySupermarket brand director Pip Heywood says: “Having shared great success, many awards and a lot of fun in developing the ‘Save money, feel epic’ campaign with Mother, we acknowledge it’s time for a change. There is a huge mutual respect between Moneysupermarket.com and Mother and we are proud of, and grateful for, the work they have delivered for our brand – enabling us to stand out from the crowd in a loud category with highly disruptive, engaging and award-winning advertising.
“As we evolve our business strategy under our new CEO, Mark Lewis, and look to reinvent price comparison to drive new areas of growth, we are looking for a new creative partner to help us capitalise on these opportunities.”
So why not ask them to come up with something different? Not a problem the consultancies seem to have.
Anyway, off we go and it’ll be interesting to see who pitches (procurement issues aside, which they rarely are).
Price comparison websites are one of the few big-spending areas of British advertising which are open to UK only agencies as well as the networks. So a bright indie might find its way on to the list. Nils Leonard’s new Uncommon Creative Studio? Wieden+Kennedy and adam&eveDDB haven’t got one, neither has AMV BBDO, currently breathing new business fire under returning CEO Cilla Snowball. Then there’s Accenture…
Should be interesting.
Tough on Mother, though, although we never warmed to the campaign (not unusual in this sector).
