Winter fuel payments axed, benefits under threat and NHS England about to be confined to history: we could be back in the days of Tory chancellor George ‘Slasher’ Osborne.
Agencies could hardly expect to avoid Keir Starmer’s and Rachel Reeves’ ever-swinging Labour axe and the UK government has revealed a somewhat abbreviated new model when it reviews agencies later this year, combining media buying and planning (which seems a pretty obvious thing to do) as part of a new Media and Creative framework reduced to eight so-called ‘lots.’ The aim is to reduce agencies on the government’s roster from 36 to 22. MediaSense is assisting.
The lots are:
Lot 1: Media strategy, planning and buying (one agency)
Lot 2: Out of home media buying (one agency)
Lot 3: Media strategy and planning (one agency)
Lot 4: Creative strategy and development (eight agencies)
Lot 5: Creative production and fulfilment (one agency)
Lot 6: Events (six agencies)
Lot 7: Integrated end-to-end marketing (three agencies)
Lot 8: Marketing audit and advice (one agency)
Government roster non-media agencies currently are : 23Red, Accenture Song, DDB UK, FCB Inferno, Four Agency Worldwide, Freud Communications, Havas UK, House 337, M&C Saatchi, MullenLowe London, Unlimited and Pablo (usually working together) and VML.
Media is the biggie, currently handled by Omnicom construct OmniGov with WPP’s Wavemaker helping out with planning. The Government usually spends about £200m on media although with its current cost-cutting mindset it may not.
Omnicom along with the other big ad holding companies is currently telling shareholders it wants to bump up so-called ‘principal’ or ‘inventory’ media, buying on its own account and selling on to clients at a margin. This already seems to have spooked the US Federal Trade Commission which is looking into the proposed Omnicom/IPG merger.
There would be hell to pay if one of the tabloids discovered that whoever handles the UK government’s media buying was doing any such thing. So they probably won’t.
