One of the year’s noteworthy campaign was Nationwide from New Commercial Arts, which also affords us a rare glimpse of what actually goes on under the bonnet of the big holding companies.
NCA won Nationwide after resigning Lloyds brand Halifax only to find, in turn, that they had to abandon Nationwide after selling to WPP’s Ogilvy. Ogilvy handles Lloyds’ CRM work, apparently worth more on its own than Nationwide. (As a Lloyds customer I find this perplexing.)
A shame because the Nationwide campaign, featuring Dominic West as the clueless and shiftless head of ANY Bank is what agencies dream of: a star-packed potential series with legs. The baton has now passed to new agency Mother, more than capable if it can overcome the ‘not invented here’ syndrome, not always easy.
WPP has already shuffled its creative agencies once under former boss Mark Read – JWT, Wunderman and Y&R merging into VML – and there may be more to come under new broom Cindy Rose. Abandoning Ogilvy, which remains among adland’s strongest brands, may be a bridge too far though. VML may morph further into WPP Creative. Worth keeping an eye on.
Terrific campaign. Three loud cheers for NCA – and three more for Mother for picking up the baton. It also presents a fascinating example of life imitating art as Nationwide CEO Debbie Crosbie morphs into a real life version of Nationwide’s fictional antagonist at AnyBank. Her £7M pay package is three times that of her predecessor Joe Garner. The rationale? Well, Nationwide’s uncontested takeover of Virgin Money makes the UK’s largest mutual the size of a bank. That would be the same Virgin Money whose share price had gone sideways for years, and whose ROCE was too low to interest either listed High St competitors or private equity. Astute MAA readers will be aware that, unlike plc competitors, Nationwide faces no shareholder pressure over quarterly returns and is immune to hostile takeover activity. All of which makes you wonder whether someone’s really chosen the right pay benchmark, no? Nice work if you can get it!