Four agencies are reported to be pitching for Sky’s main brand advertising account: Brothers and Sisters which has worked on the business since the agency’s foundation, WCRS, Sky’s in-house creative unit and one other. It would be surprising if the one other weren’t adam&eveDDB which took on Sky Sports relatively recently and produced the striking ‘Take your seat’ ad to launch Sky’s coverage of the Premier League.
Sky may, though, want a separate agency for Sports, still the foundation of its business.
Sky is currently being battled over by US cable giant Comcast and a combo of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox (Fox owns 39 per cent) and Disney. Sky is the UK’s biggest advertiser with a spend estimated at £300m but its new owner is likely to be looking for economies as it seeks a payback on £26bn or so of mostly borrowed money.
WCRS is a long–standing Sky agency and recently won Sky Mobile. Former boss Debbie Klein now works for Sky, which may be a help or not. Brothers and Sisters founder Andy Fowler used to work for Sky and losing Sky might be seen as life threatening for an agency that has had a run of bad luck, including losing Carphone Warehouse, despite still producing good work.
Update
The other two agencies aside from WCRS and Brothers and Sisters are Mother and TBWA, it seems. Cue much scratching of heads at adam&eveDDB, Sky Sports’ agency.
It’s a good list for the new regime at TBWA London to be on. Former Engine boss Klein (Engine owns WCRS) is reported to be behind the review. Should be interesting when she comes across a senior adam&eve-ite.
