As was reported yesterday, BBDO has picked up the global account for Uncle Ben’s, giving the agency its third Mars brand win in six months joining Snickers and Wrigley Extra. In the process, BBDO picked up the US Uncle Ben’s account from fellow Omnicom unit TBWA\Chiat\Day as well as the worldwide business after a head-to-head pitch.
The move comes at a time when Mars is consolidating its creative duties through the end of next year and housing each of its global brands with a single creative agency from its current roster including BBDO, DDB, SapientNitro and TBWA.
In a statment, Mars’ global CMO Bruce McColl says, “We get outstanding support from our current agency partners, and we feel that aligning each core brand under a dedicated global agency will more effectively build global communication platforms that yield best-in-class strategy and creative work to build our iconic brands. As one of our billion dollar brands, [Uncle Ben’s] has obviously done well under current agency management, and with this consolidation, we are very optimistic about its future performance.”
Our spies are already speculating that Chiat’s loss could lead to “layoffs of several ACDs and creatives [today].” We’ll keep our eyes open for this one.