InterContinental Hotel Group has confirmed that WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather will lead the marketing effort for its Holiday Inn brand, which recently completed a $1 billion global relaunch that included the remodeling of nearly 3,000 Holiday Inn branded hotels worldwide.
O&M replaces McCann Erickson on the Holiday Inn
account.
The move is part of a broader consolidation of IHG’s marketing services account within the WPP fold, the client has confirmed. Under the new alliance, the scope of work
that WPP agencies will handle for all of the hotel group’s brands includes creative advertising, media planning and buying, social media, design, PR, market research and other marketing
services.
The company has previously reported its worldwide annual marketing spending to be in the $450 million range. In 2010, it confirmed spending $100 million to promote the
re-launch of the Holiday Inn brand with a first-for-the-brand global ad campaign effort created by McCann. In the U.S. last year, according to Kantar Media, the client spent $42 million on ads for the
Holiday Inn brands.
At least one big piece of the new alliance has been in place for a while. In 2009, WPP’s Mindshare won the consolidated media planning and buying assignment
for IHG. According to a client spokeswoman, that assignment remains intact going forward as part of the new “Team IHG” at WPP.
IHG, one of the largest hotel companies in
the world, franchises, leases, manages or owns over 4,500 hotels in nearly 100 countries and territories. It has nine hotel brands, including InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo,
Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites.
advertisement
advertisement
The company also recently launched two new hotel chains: Even
Hotels and Hualuxe Hotels & Resorts.