An email went out to staffers this morning letting them know that Crest will be parting ways with Saatchi New York for sister shop, Publicis Worldwide. This is all part of a larger move for P&G, which has been slowly making the shift from one to the other. In April, Procter & Gamble awarded “a new unnamed division of the Publicis Groupe all of the marcomms activity for its Oral-B product line” and shifted to one of the few “pay per performance” business models in the business.
A Crest spokesperson told us in an email that:
“This is about agency consolidation for our Oral Care category. You may be aware that Oral Care at P&G has moved to a Brand Agency Leader model with Publicis as the lead agency. We started with Oral-B/brushes and this is part of that on-going consolidation bringing in Crest and some of the other Oral Care brands. There is now some realignment within the holding company and, for the most part, the Saatchi advertising creatives will move to Publicis.”
All this means that Publicis will be taking over the $200M creative for Crest in the US and Europe. Now that’s a big move. Still, it’s an in-network switch, so be sure that Levy aint sweatin’ it one bit.