Mindshare Sydney is on alert as Unilever's global review of media planning and buying rolls out to the Australian market.
Unilever kicked off the global review out of the UK this week and a local spokesperson confirmed this morning that Australia is included in that review.
Currently, Mindshare handles all media planning and buying for Unilever in Australia, since winning the account from UM in 2011. At the time it was a three-way pitch between Mindshare, PHD and Initiative.
In Australia, Unilever, spends about $54 million annually on main media, according to the 214 AdNews Nielsen Top Advertisers report. Its global ad spend was around US$8.3 billion last year, according to AdAge.
The FMCG giant reviews its media every three years as part of a governance process. In previous reviews, incumbents have been invited to pitch, and it's not expected that this time around would be any different. Globally it works with Mindshare, Omnicom's PHD and Interpublic's Initiative.
At the company's earnings update on 20 January, CFO Jean-Marc Huet said that the company's media spend was expected to increase as it pushed down the cost of agency and production costs – which have fallen from 24% to 20% over the last three years.
Mindshare,PHD and Initiative were all unavailable for comment at the time of writing.
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