Morrisons for Leo Burnett, Brooklyn Brothers lines up redundancies

It’s going to be a rough old Christmas for some agencies as they head into a distinctly unpromising 2023 and Publicis.Poke, the somewhat unconvincing amalgam of Publicis with Poke and Arc within Publicis Groupe, has lost its flagship account Morrisons to Leo Burnett.

This, of course, keeps it within the French-owned Groupe but is a poser nonetheless for Publicis Groupe country manager Annette King. Her higher profile charges Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi appear to be doing well but the agency the Groupe is named after, and on which it was founded, seems to be struggling here.

IPG-owned Brooklyn Brothers, part of Interpublic’s Golin, has certainly hit hard times: It’s gone into formal consultation with all its 70 or so staff, a statutory requirement when you’re trying to make 20 or more redundant. Golin/Brooklyn Brothers never looked a particularly credible proposition. Golin is primarily a PR agency.

Morrisons, which has problems of its own as it’s now lumbered with billions of private equity debt in a struggling grocery market, is a good win for Leo Burnett nonetheless. The agency has delved into retail in the past with mixed fortunes but has shown enviable consistency on clients like McDonald’s.