• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, January 4, 2013

Snack food giant Mondelez International, recently spun off from Kraft Foods, has consolidated U.S. media buying and planning with Publicis Groupe’s MediaVest, the client confirmed Friday. Previously the U.S. business was divided between MediaVest and New York-based independent Horizon Media, which has been cut from the client’s roster.
 
Mondelez also created two new global communications planning assignments that were awarded to MediaVest for biscuit, gum and candy brands and to Aegis Media for chocolate and coffee brands.
 
The client said that MediaVest and Aegis Media, which handles the client’s media chores in a number of markets outside the U.S., would serve as the marketer’s “global hubs for driving global media measurement, best practice sharing, communications planning, global media platform development, insight gathering and building capabilities more quickly."
 
The client’s U.S. ad spending totaled closed to $245 million in 2011 according to Kantar Media.

The company spends an additional $320 million in Western European markets, which were awarded to Aegis last year after a separate review. Aegis also handles client media duties in China, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In addition to the U.S., MediaVest handles client planning and buying duties in Latin America, Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, Middle East and Africa markets.
 
The client stated that the new structure “creates an unprecedented global brain trust for Mondelez International to take advantage of and localize to each market we operate in.” That said, while MediaVest and Aegis will handle the largest portion of the company’s global media duties, the client stressed that it would continue to work with a “number of partners locally and regionally beyond” those two shops.  
 
The Mondelez spinoff was completed in October of 2012. The company’s portfolio includes a number of billion dollar brands such as Cadbury, Milka, Jacobs Coffee, Nabisco and Oreo biscuits, Tang powdered beverages and Trident gum. Annual revenues total approximately $36 billion.