Coca-Cola Names UM Lead Media Agency in North America

P&G Launches North American Media Review

Procter & Gamble has launched a review of its North American media business, Adweek reports.

P&G is the largest advertiser in the U.S., spending an estimated $2.6 billion annually, according to Kantar Media. The account is currently split between Starcom’s MediaVest, which handles most of the business in the U.S. and Dentsu Aegis’s Carat, which handles media buying in Canada. It is unclear if either agency will participate in the review.

The move follows the decision last summer to divest or shed 90-100 of its brands and the appointment of Kristine Decker as brand director, North America brand operations in January. Late last month, P&G also announced its desire to “make deep cuts in the number of advertising agencies it works with, hoping to save up to half-a-billion dollars in fees.”

It’s a Four-Shop Race to Fill Honda’s Digital Needs

American Honda Motor Company works hard to keep up with the competition but hasn’t been quite so successful in the hybrid space. Honda’s Prius equivalent may have been called The Insight, but the company recently pitted all three major holding companies against one another in the search for a bit more of that key noun.
Other campaigns have gone viral (shout out to Michael Bolton) and, according to AdWeek, Honda spends approximately $50 million on digital advertising each year.
Now who’s competing for that money?
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Live Without Your Phone 10 Minutes and Help a Child Living Without Clean Water

To raise awareness of the millions of children going without clean water each day, Unicef is challenging you to see how long you could deny yourself something as simple as checking your phone.

Mobile visitors to UnicefTapProject.org can join the challenge (and help raise money for the cause) by following a few simple instructions and putting their smartphone down. For every 10 minutes you leave your phone alone, the project's sponsors will fund a day of clean water for needy kids worldwide.

The mobile Web app is currently in beta and scheduled for official launch March 1. Droga5 helped to conceive the campaign, part of an annual program now in its eighth year, and MediaVest serves as a media partner. While your phone is parked, the site fills your screen with stats and information about the need for clean water. It also encourages you to keep going and contrasts your elapsed time with the number of frivolous tweets, texts and Instagrams that have been posted while you've been participating.

Surely, even hardcore mobile addicts set down their phones for 10 minutes each day—perhaps while taking a nice hot shower, which millions of less-fortunate folks around the world would view as a luxury. 


    



Media Decoder Blog: American Honda Divides Its Biggest Ad Assignments

One of the largest recent reviews for an advertising account has ended with the incumbent agency keeping a significant part of the assignment, but relinquishing two large pieces to other agencies.