Following Bayer’s assignment of its newly acquired pharma brands to JWT and BBDO earlier this week, another big OTC name has made an agency shift: McCann will be AOR for the vitamin side of RB, formerly Reckitt Benckiser, moving forward.
The British RB owns quite a few familiar brands (Durex, Clearasil, Scholl, etc.), but its “vitamins, minerals and supplements” unit includes, most prominently, Airborne and products like “MegaRed®, number 1 in the healthy heart segment, Move Free® the number 2 in joint care,” which the company has owned since its 2012 acquisition of Schiff Nutrition.
From the McCann press release:
Earlier this year, RB appointed three new agencies, McCann Worldgroup, Droga5 and W+K, to form a roster of creative agencies in addition to their long standing creative partner, Havas Worldwide. McCann currently support the RB brands, Mucinex® and Delsym® globally. The decision to extend their support to the VMS brands recognises the excellent work they have already done on the Mucinex brand with the development of a new campaign that has been on air in the U.S. since October, 2014.
As noted above, this win follows RB’s decision in May to choose McCann as its first external agency for Mucinex (here’s CEO Harris Diamond‘s internal memo).
Havas, which handled most of the Merck brands before its acquisition by Bayer, also served as creative AOR for RB since 2006; the appointment of the three additional agencies in May followed the departure of COO Ron Bess, who was replaced by global president Andrew Benett as Havas moved to defend the RB business last December.