In the wake of Unilever’s media agency assignments, whatever happened to streamlining?

By Michael Bürgi  •  October 2, 2024  •

Ivy Liu

Unilever’s assignment of media duties following a comprehensive global media review feels a bit like an episode of Oprah: you get an assignment, and you get an assignment, and you get an assignment! 

On Monday evening, the consumer packaged goods giant announced the distribution of its global media business to pretty much each of the Big Six holding companies: WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, IPG, Dentsu and Havas.

Interestingly, such a diffuse set of assignments seems to fly in the face of discussions in recent years of multinational giants — those participating in the “mediapaloozas” of the past — looking to simplify or reduce their roster of agencies. And the holding companies have spared no effort or expense to add any number of services, from commerce media to influencer marketing to handle all of a marketers’ needs. 

But in this case, as one executive in one of the winning media agencies said, and another observer of media deals agreed, this is largely a matter of Unilever giving a greater say in media decisions to its local offices and regions. 

“The local markets at Unilever gave a lot of input on the decisions” to appoint media agencies, said the agency exec, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment by the client. “Unilever doesn’t have a very strong central marketing operation.”

The media observer, who also declined to comment on the record, noted that in many markets for CPG companies, there’s an inclination toward selecting the media agency that delivers the lowest pricing for TV inventory. 

“You look at India, or you look at Denmark, and say agency X can buy it at minus 20, but agency Y can buy it at minus 30 — then they go with the cheaper option,” said the observer, who also noted that some markets have greater upside in growth potential, such as many markets in Africa that remain underdeveloped.

Unilever declined to comment, and the media agencies that won referred requests for comment to Unilever. 

That could be changing, however, said the media observer, because Unilever has undergone significant restructuring, with job losses and a new CMO in Esi Eggleston Bracey, who joined a year ago. 

“They’ve been on a bit of a journey,” said the observer who noted thousands in job losses at Unilever. “I suspect a lot of that is to remove a lot of that local autonomy. Perhaps this pitch came too soon for that, and maybe in their next round they’ll try and centralize even more.”

Certainly as scale becomes less of a differentiator in negotiations, marketing decisions could become even more centralized, added the observer. ”What happens when scale no longer matters? When you’re not buying linear TV in a traditional way and everything is platform traded and auction-placed? Does that clout matter as much locally or regionally?” they asked. “I’m bullish that we are converging towards more simplification, consolidation and integration, when you throw in retail media and influencer and all these other adjacent capabilities. All of that is super hard to do when you’ve got competing agencies doing things in very different ways.”

For now, however, this episode of Oprah seems to have landed in WPP’s favor — or at least saved it from another serious body blow had Unilever pulled U.S. media duties from Mindshare. Not only did it retain media duties in the U.S., many parts of Europe (including the U.K.) and mainland China, it picked up commerce media duties from Publicis in the U.S. It also picked up several high-growth markets in Australia and New Zealand, as well as South Africa.

While Omnicom did lose a few markets — Canada and South Africa — it held onto close to three quarters of its Unilever business. IPG picked up Canada and North Africa from Omnicom, while keeping several Latin American assignments. Besides losing commerce media in the U.S., Publicis did add duties across other parts of southeast Asia. Dentsu won Unilever’s work in Japan and Havas kept its assignments in France and Spain. 

In the wake of Unilever’s media agency assignments, whatever happened to streamlining?

Such a diffuse set of assignments by seems to fly in the face of discussions in recent years of multinational giants – those participating in the “mediapaloozas” of the past – looking to simplify or reduce their roster of agencies.

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