Starcom Sweetened With $60M Mars-Wrigley Asian Account

Big pitch decisions continue to roll out of Asia. The latest win goes to Publicis Groupe's Starcom, which has won the $60 million Mars Wrigley consolidated review for the region of Southeast Asia that includes Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The incumbents on the account were Omnicom's OMG, which handled the Mars media assignment and WPP's MEC, which handled Wrigley's. The bulk of the spending is said to come from the Mars side of the business.

Mars, the giant candy and snack food concern, absorbed Wrigley's in 2008. A year later, the merged entity conducted its first consolidation review in the U.S., awarding the combined $500 million assignment to Starcom sibling agency MediaVest. A year after that, however, MediaVest client Kraft acquired Mars competitor Cadbury. The result: Mars shifted is U.S. assignment to Starcom without a formal review.

For Starcom, it's the second big piece of business won from the client after a formal review in as many years. In 2010, it won the Mars-Wrigley consolidated media assignment for China, with estimated spending of $120 million.

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Commenting on the win, David Glass, vice president marketing, Wrigley Asia-Pacific, stated: "We believe that by partnering with Starcom we are better positioned to realize these opportunities at the local and at the regional levels."

The Mars-Wrigley decision is the latest in a series of big pitches concluding in the Asia-Pacific region. Starcom also won big in China, with Coca-Cola's recent decision to retain the agency; the beverage marketer spends $1 billion annually on ads, according to CTR Market Research.

And Procter & Gamble just awarded a $450 million Southeast Asia media planning and buying assignment to WPP's MediaCom after a formal review. In that one Starcom and sibling MediaVest came out on the losing end, but more than made up for it with the Coke and Mars-Wrigley victories.

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