The Heineken Company’s Strongbow Cider brand picked 360i as its digital agency of record after a review. This news follows last month’s news indicating that Droga5, which had been lead agency on both Strongbow and Newcastle since 2013, would no longer work on the business and had won AB InBev’s The Best Damn in its place.
In separate competitive reviews, Heineken went with 360i to work on digital advertising for the brand and IPG’s Current to handle public relations.
Based on the release, it would seem that Heineken plans to spend more to promote the brand: “Strongbow has exciting new programming planned for 2017 as we evolve our work to align with the global campaign,” said the parent company’s senior director of marketing Jessica Robinson, adding, “360i is an agency that’s digitally led, but not digitally limited. They proved the ideal marketing partner to help us drive continued growth, consideration and momentum.”
Strongbow launched a European creative review back in February after more than 10 years with St. Luke’s. We do not currently have official word on the client’s plans to replace Droga5 as creative AOR or to change its marketing strategy moving forward. At the time news of the last agency change broke, we heard that Droga5 had not been actively working on the account for some time, but the precise size of the business going to 360i is not clear.