• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, December 9, 2020

The Coca-Cola Co., one of the largest advertisers in the world, confirmed today that it is conducting a comprehensive global agency review covering creative, media and various subcomponents within those disciplines. 

UM, McCann and Wieden + Kennedy, Starcom and Carat are among the incumbents. 

The company had advertising expenses of $4.2 billion last year, up slightly from the $4.1 billion it spent in 2018, according to its latest annual report. 

The review comes as revenues for the beverage giant have slid from about $44.3 billion in 2015 to $37.2 billion in 2019.

For the first nine months of 2020, revenue was down 15% to $24.4 billion. 

The company issued this statement: 

“We are on a journey to fundamentally transform and dramatically improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our marketing investments. By improving our processes, eliminating duplication and optimizing spend, we will generate significant savings to fuel reinvestment in our brands. Media and creative (includes creative, production management, shopper, and experiential marketing) agency services require significant investment from our brands. They are also a crucial component of our ongoing digital transformation journey to drive our business.

With that in mind, we have decided to undergo a complete redesign of our media and creative agency models in an effort to align the strategic, operational, and commercial needs of our new, networked organization. This will necessitate a full review of our media and creative planning and buying practices, as well as our media and creative agency appointments and commercial relationships around the world. We expect this process will be completed by the end of 2021.”