Mother continues US hot streak with Sonic Drive-In
but loses out in Vodafone UK pitch
Mother LA has scored another medium-sized win in the always tricky US market (for UK agencies), retaining Sonic-Drive-In in a repitch against FCB. Sonic spends about $300m annually on its burger chain.
This follows its win of Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal et al.) last week.
At the same Mother London has been knocked off the shortlist for Vodafone (at the “chemistry” stage according to Campaign, so early on) as now has incumbent Ogilvy, which pitched as part of a WPP package. AMV BBDO, Leo Burnett and McCann remain in the running. New Commercial Arts handles Vodafone International.
It seems odd for any big client not to keep Mother on board, until the final stages at least, as, unlike most of its peers, it can be guaranteed to come up with something radical. And, boy, does Vodafone need it. Its recent Christmas effort from Ogilvy was OK but, over the years, it’s wasted more money on terrible advertising than just about any other big British company.
Mother’s fortunes in the US presumably owe something too efforts of global CEO Michael Wall, who’s collected a lot of Air Miles since joining the agency, and New York CCO Oriel Davis-Lyons. Davis-Lyons held senior posts at Spotify and Droga5 previously (he began his working life as a chef, which kind of makes sense.)
This is an amended version of an earlier post.
