Heineken Consolidates $350M Global Media In Shop Shootout

Heineken-Bottles-

Dutch brewing giant Heineken International is conducting a consolidation review of its estimated $350 million global media agency assignment, the company confirmed Wednesday.

The review will pit two of the company’s media roster shops in a shootout: Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest Group and WPP’s Mindshare.

SMG shop MediaVest handles media for the client’s brands in the U.S., including flagship brand Heineken, Newcastle, Dos Equis and Amstel Light.

According to Kantar Media, the brewer spent $124 million on ads in the U.S. in 2010, or nearly one-third of its overall estimated spend. MediaVest also handles media duties for the brewer in Mexico and the UK. It was awarded UK duties in 2008 without a review in the wake of Heineken’s acquisition of the Scottish & Newcastle brewery, a MediaVest client.

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MediaVest sister shop Starcom just started work on a new assignment for Anheuser-Busch. The St. Louis-based brewer selected Starcom in early November to assist A-B and its in-house media planning and buying unit, Busch Media Group, with research and planning duties for all the company's beer brands across national, local and digital media. It’s not an AOR assignment, as both planning and buying for A-B continue to be handled by the in-house unit.

Mindshare now handles client media duties in Ireland and the home market, the Netherlands -- which it won earlier this year after a review, replacing 12-year incumbent Kobalt, the Dutch media shop. Mindshare had been Heineken’s UK incumbent until MediaVest took over three years ago. Heineken indicated that the winning shop will be tasked with “maximizing the effectiveness of the company’s … brand building and fully utilizing the company’s increased buying power.”

The review is expected to be completed with the new agency in place by the middle of 2012. The brewer said that the winner, “in first instance, will focus on Heineken’s top 15 markets,” which represent 85% of the company’s media spend. Those markets are the U.S., Spain, UK, Russia, Italy, Poland, Mexico, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, Brazil, Finland and Nigeria.

Commenting on the review, Alexis Nasard, chief commercial officer at Heineken, stated: “The ultimate goal is to improve our media performance through better strategy, planning and execution, while maintaining the absolute requirement for stand-out brand communication in all channels we choose to focus and operate in.’’

Creative duties are not part of the review. The company's global advertising agency is Wieden+Kennedy, although a company rep said that Publicis International also does some project work for the brewer.

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