Last month we heard that P&G executives were pressing Publicis to cut global costs across the board after the consumer goods giant sent most of its North American media business to Omnicom in December.
Maurice Levy responded to that post by telling Business Insider, “You can put in my mouth that this is pure bullshit,” but the rumor certainly did fit with P&G’s well-publicized plans to reduce its agency roster by 40 percent in the interest of saving $370 million in 2015. (The client now claims that it succeeded in those efforts.)
In some cases, consolidation benefits Publicis. P&G recently sent its Fairy dish liquid account to the big P according to sources at various UK-based trade pubs, though the news is not official yet. This decision followed a review in which Publicis beat out Grey for the global business.
Americans will know the Fairy brand, which is based in the U.K. and Ireland, as Dawn. Publicis has run creative for the brand in North America for years while Grey had the rest of the global dishwashing business until this review went down. You may recall 2010’s “Oil Spill” cleanup spot by PKT/Publicis New York, which some data company called particularly effective due to its images of duckies and other birds covered in oil. Coincidentally, that ad debuted right before BP single-handedly ruined the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem for years to come.
The most interesting part of this story may be the (alleged) fact that procurement, rather than creative, ran the pitch–which implies that Publicis agreed to P&G’s lowball demands in order to win the business away from Grey. Again, the purpose behind the review was consolidation in the interest of lowering overall marketing costs around the world so P&G can better compete with tight-belted rivals like Unilever.
Publicis’ most recent North American campaigns for Dawn ran several months ago.
UPDATE: AdAge got the internal memo from Arthur Sadoun after this post went live. It clarifies that, as reported before, Publicis won the global assignments for P&G’s dishwashing liquids beyond Dawn in the U.S., including the Yes, Joy, Salvo, Ayudin, Magistral, Dreft and Jar brands.