As we reported late last month, Pfizer recently held a very quiet creative agency review in which it picked Grey to promote its anti-heartburn drug Nexium. The win was significant in that Pfizer spent approximately $66 million on paid media around the brand last year.
This week we’ve learned that Nexium was not the only brand involved in that review. Pfizer also sought a new lead agency to promote its Centrum vitamin line, and multiple sources tell us that it picked New York indie shop The Burns Group.
A Burns Group spokesperson declined to confirm or comment on this story. Pfizer has not yet responded to a subsequent request, but the client generally maintains a very strict no-tolerance policy concerning media leaks.
One source with no connections to the Burns Group stated, on condition of anonymity, that the shop had won the Centrum business because the client preferred its work to that of another, unnamed party. In the past, Burns has worked on related brands including Advil, Bayer and Similasan.
Publicis Kaplan Thaler (now Publicis New York) and McCann won lead creative duties on Centrum in 2006 and 2008, respectively, when it was still owned by Wyatt. The brand later went to Leo Burnett Chicago, as evidenced by an “old guys play pickup basketball” spot from 2014. In keeping with the pharma giant’s practices, neither party announced that win at the time.
According to Kantar Media, Pfizer spent approximately $84 million promoting Centrum in 2015 and just over $18 million during the first half of this year.
For the record, we will always remember the taglines “Always Complete. From A to Zinc” and, of course, “It’s a great time to be silver!”