UK supermarket Asda is reviewing both its creative and media accounts, at Havas and Publicis’ Spark Foundry respectively. Havas is repitching.
The move is hardly surprising as Asda (like rival Morrisons) is labouring under a mountain of private equity debt following a £7bn buyout from Walmart by the Issa brothers (who made their money from petrol stations) and TDR Capital. Asda is also looking for a CEO.
Asda says: “The needs of our customers continue to evolve and change. As is best practice, Asda regularly reviews its supplier and agency relationships to ensure we have the right partners to support our objectives to offer uncompromising value to our customers. Ingenuity (consultancy) is assisting us and we will be conducting the process in line with the Pitch Positive guidelines.”
Havas says (through clenched teeth doubtless): “We’re incredibly proud of the large body of work we’ve produced for Asda since being appointed its retained creative agency in 2021 – including its past two blockbuster Christmas campaigns (with Christmas 2024 deep in development) and long-term brand platform, ‘That’s more like it’, which launched this year. We respect Asda’s decision to call a review of its suppliers, which we will be participating in.” Its latest campaign features fitness celeb Joe Wicks.
Asda has flitted between AMV BBDO, VCCP and Saatchi & Saatchi in recent years before settling, happily it seemed, on Havas. Before then it spent decades at Havas’ French-based rival Publicis. One purpose of the review will obviously be to save money but Asda’s market share has slipped and for supermarkets heavyweight advertising remains a big driver.
Some high profile agencies are already spoken for: BBH with Tesco, New Commercial Arts/Ogilvy with Sainsbury’s, Leo Burnett with Morrisons, McCann with Aldi and VCCP with Co-Op. Mother has to be a contender and Havas now owns a majority of Uncommon Creative Studio, which might be exercising some minds. Adam&eveDDB no longer has Waitrose, now at Saatchi alongside Waitrose.
Former Havas CEO Xavier Rees is now at AMV BBDO. So lots for Ingenuity to think about.
Havas didn’t understand Retail 101. The mistake was not that the campaign featured Joe Wicks but rather than it promoted Joe Wicks and not the ASDA product itself. Typical agency-celebrity fucking. And the theme of Cashpot for Schools is an ineffective Shopper Marketing scheme because it’s not vendor driven. Programme’s that promote (and generate) spending on specific goods get underwritten by the vendors and promote vendor specific sales – if you want additional value to Consumers, it needs to be focused on the shopper not a scheme like school gear. The campaign theme is too abstract to be effective.