• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 10, 2010

Packaged good giant Unilever Tuesday named its new global media services agency roster following a protracted review, naming incumbent WPP Group's Mindshare as its agency for U.S. and Canada, and other key markets. The review, which was initiated in July 2009, and covers 53 countries, was part of Unilever's pro forma process of evaluating its agency "arrangements periodically," but the marketer did hint at some underlying shifts in the way it plans, buys and manages its media.

"As we increasingly make use of digital and social media, we are confident that we have the best agency partners to help us engage in new ways with the 2 billion consumers whose lives we touch," stated Laura Klauberg, Unilever's vice president-global media. "In addition, greater alignment within our key country clusters will contribute to achieving exceptional results for our business in an increasingly complex and fragmented media environment."

The realignment basically shuffles Unilever's media account among its three big incumbent holding company partners - WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic - into the following national assignments:

China: PHD (Omnicom)
India: Mindshare
Thailand: Mindshare
U.S. and Canada: Mindshare
Mexico: Initiative (Interpublic)
Colombia: Initiative
Argentina: Initiative
U.K.: Mindshare
Netherlands: Mindshare
Germany: Mindshare
France: Mindshare
Spain: Mindshare
Nordics: Mindshare
Poland: Media Direction (Omnicom)
Russia: Initiative