A blog for the New Zealand creative advertising industry, now at www.campaignbrief.com/nz. Email news to: michael@campaignbrief.com

Thursday, April 26, 2007

COLENSO SNARES VODAFONE

After a pitch against a partnership of international incumbent JWT and sister WPP shop Ogilvy, Colenso BBDO has picked up the prized Vodafone business. Vodafone will also work with BBDO shops Colenso 99 as its retail agency and Aim Proximity for its direct marketing. The companies will now enter a final negotiation phase to hammer out the finer detail surrounding the relationship.
The pitch process focused at an Agency Group level on the ability to bring as many best in class partners to the table to meet Vodafone’s integrated brand and communications needs and core strengths in stand alone retail and direct marketing operations.
“Aside from strong creative and effectiveness credentials we were looking for an agency group with the right cultural fit and scale for Vodafone. We were also very keen to get as many of our marcomms needs met and serviced under one roof. And we are delighted to have found that within the Clemenger Group.” says Vodafone GM of Brand, Craig Herbison.
“We are extremely excited about this win.” said Roger MacDonnell, CEO of Colenso BBDO. “We love the Vodafone culture and see a huge opportunity to deliver outstanding work”.
Colenso is also currently working with Vodafone on its new brand campaign set to launch mid-year.
“This is an exciting year for Vodafone and we have some very big challenges ahead of us. We are delighted to be taking that journey with Colenso and Aim Proximity on board,” says Herbison.

16 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

So that's the second big account in a week that Ogilvy has failed to nail: like the NZ cricket team, semi final chokers

5:02 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's a dirty old business,

Vodafone says the direct isn't up for pitch, so Draft can keep it. But actually, they were just protecting the secrecy of Aim Proximity's involvement in the Colenso pitch, because Aim works for Telecom. Now, lets wait for the 'Aim ditches Telecom' and 'Vodafone ditches Draft' press releases. Am I right?

5:51 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

5.02.pm
Mmmm, Colenso is currently working with Vodafone on it's new brand campaign?
Then what was the point of a pitch?

7:06 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I support two agencies: mine, and anyone pitching against Ogilvy." (to paraphrase a T-shirt)

Good result though. Look forward to seeing some more good local vodafone work.

7:40 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Aim have already made it public they would ditch telecom if they won, But they may have only won the DM and not the interactive.

7:41 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

5.51 - do you believe in UFO's too?

8:34 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So did Aim go into this willingly or were they forced into it with one arm behind their back? I mean, the Clems GROUP will do well out of it I guess, but for Aim to go from all TCom DM including home biz and net to Vodafone mobile only would have to be a drop. Informed comment from someone blabby who's about to lose their job and doesn't care, anyone?

9:40 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Big ups to Roger and his team at Colenso BBDO. It's likely AIM was tiring of Telecom's culture. T'com have suffered from Saatchi capture for the last few years right from Kevin Robert's influence on Gattung to the way Andrew Stone and co influence Kevin Kendrick and his underlings. Power within Kendrick's group is in the hands of just a few - all Saatchi loyalists. Last year Saatchi's arrogance was personified when they made a bid to take over all PR, design, brand work and DM at Telecom. Their mandate is to squash all other agency partners so they can grow their share of spend even though they don't have the specific skill sets or capability to deliver all these disciplines. Aim is obviously brilliant at what they do. They got dropped by BNZ and got Westpac and now they've thumbed their noses at Telecom and got Voda. Consider this poser - Telecom has some 800-9000 vacancies and of those 150 are in marketing. Now ask yourself what's caused that situation? cheers sc

1:37 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You had me until "skill sets".

I had a Meccano set that you were meant to be able to make into a wee paddle steamer once, but I just made guns from it. It had a skill level of 2, whatever that means.

Was that a skill set?

8:21 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

8:34 - you look a bit of a twat now, don't you?

Ha.

11:59 am NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Direct and interactive are one and the same these days....Aim understand this and that's probably why they've been appointed. Looking forward to some great work.

PS Skill sets, ie ad agencies who say they do everything but don't really have a clue.

12:53 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

-

Kingy should have some fun with Voda. Be a nice change from Optus, that's for sure.

-

5:25 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If Direct and Interactive are one in the same, how come DM agencies don't win Cyber Lions?

5:56 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Probably the same reason 13 year old art students don't win titanium lions.

8:27 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Indeed. Titanium Lions are reserved for ripoff merchants - and dumbass judges who didnt have the smarts to check it aint bin done before! God, that was funny when it happened. Marnises. Or should that be marnii?

8:13 pm NZST

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting how we insist on using such sinister imagery. "Colenso SNARES vodafone", "DDB LURES Talbot" etc. Not doing ourselves any favours.

3:31 pm NZST

 

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