Selecting an Advertising Agency Team
MillerCoors Shakeup Favors DraftFCB Chicago and Saatchi & Saatchi
Apr 11, 2009 Carroll Trosclair
When news broke that MillerCoors was reviewing its team of advertising agencies, one of the biggest in the business, observers might have envisioned all sorts of wild "Mad Men" and "Trust Me" television scenarios. But according to Chief Marketing Officer Andy England, the decisions came down to company knowledge, beer experience and the company’s desire to give similar products to one agency.
He said in a news release that MillerCoors "placed a high value on agencies that had a deep understanding of MillerCoors beer brands and their unique positioning." England said he considered only agencies that were already working for MillerCoors. "There was no reason to look beyond that pool of agencies. We recognize there is a benefit in developing long term relationships with agencies that already fully understand our business, he added."
Diverse Family of Brands
Even when company knowledge and product experience are the major factors in selecting agencies, the process has to be especially challenging when the advertiser is a newly merged company with a diverse family of brands. Multimillion accounts were at stake for most of the agencies.
Molson Coors Brewing and SAB Miller merged their North American companies in mid 2008, about the same time that Anheuser-Busch was merging with InBev of Belgium, setting the stage for a gigantic beer marketing war. The merger also almost guaranteed a shakeup of the agency lineups because Miller and Coors had brought in pairs of similar brands that could now be managed by one agency.
MillerCoors entered the new battle with Anheuser-BuschInBev armed with about 30 brands of light, full calorie, premium, imported, craft and microbrewed beers. They included Miller Lite, Miller Genuine Draft, MGD 64, Miller High Life, Miller Chill, Foster’s, Coors Banquet, Icehouse, Mickey’s, Keystone, Milwaukee’s Best, Peroni, Pilsner Urquell, Grolsch, Sparks, Coors Non-Alcoholic, Molson Canadian and Irish Red, as well as craft or microbrewed beers from the Jacob Leinenkugel, Blue Moon Brewing and Blitz-Weinhard Brewing companies.
Most of the brands offer different characteristics and must be marketed to different audiences, often in different geographic areas.
Bartle Boglie Handled Miller Lite
Those brands were split among nine agencies:
- Bartle-Bogle Hegarty (BBH) a New York-based agency, which handled Miller Lite.
- Young & Rubican (Y&R) of the WPP Group
- DraftFCB of the Interpublic Group
- Saatchi & Saatchi of the Publicis Groupe
- Upshot of Chicago
- The Omnicom’s Group’s Integer of Lakewood, Colorado
- Jacobson Rost of Chicago
- Digitas of the Publicis Groupe
- ARC Publicidad, which serves the Hispanic market.
DraftFCB Chicago Gets Miller Lite Account
The big winners in the reshuffling were:
- DraftFCB, which won the Miller Lite account and retained Coors Light, giving it both of the MillerCoors premium light brands. It also retained Coors Banquet. It handled a series of successful Coors Light campaigns when England was CMO at Coors
- Saatchi & Saatchi, which added the Miller Genuine Draft, MGD 64 and Keystone accounts. It already had the Miller High Life advertising. It now handles two of MillerCoors largest below-premium brands.
Y&R and BBH Released
Y&R, BBH and Upshot were released after the 2009 review, decreasing the number of MillerCoors agencies from nine to six. AdAge reported that Y&R had handled Miller accounts since early in the 1990s, but under the merger it found itself reporting to the former CMO at Coors, its longtime competitor.
BBH CEO Emma Cookson said "we've been very proud of our work for Miller Lite, but have come to believe that we are not fully compatible partners for the future."
Reference:
"MillerCoors Shakes Up Agency Roster," by Andrew McMains, AdWeek, 4-0-2009
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