Source: Adweek
CPG conglomerate Kimberly-Clark recently launched a global creative agency review as it seeks to restructure the roster of shops responsible for marketing its extensive brand portfolio.
The giant whose brands include Kleenex and Huggies, has long worked with several WPP agencies, including Ogilvy and JWT. The review now forces the world’s largest advertising company to play defense amid reports of a disappointing financial performance in 2017 that led investors to temper expectations for 2018.
The review also comes at a time when the company’s chief competitors, including Unilever and P&G, have made headlines for touting the benefits gained by cutting hundreds of millions from their digital marketing budgets.
According to several parties with direct knowledge of the matter, Kimberly-Clark issued the call to its agency partners in early January, with responses due near the end of that month. Sources say media planning and buying duties are not in play, with Mindshare remaining the company’s chief media agency partner (though Kimberly-Clark has increasingly taken programmatic operations in-house).
In recent years, the company’s marketing leaders have expressed frustration with the traditional agency-of-record model, opting for a more fluid per-project arrangement with WPP rather than seeking to consolidate responsibility with any one network.
Analysts at independent research firm COMvergence and international consultancy R3 estimated that the company spends around $400 million globally on paid media each year, with that number rising as high as $800 million when accounting for nonmonitored digital spend.
