Publicis Groupe creates full-service agency for P&G UK
French PR firm Publicis Groupe has assembled a bespoke, full-service team — based at Saatchi & Saatchi's London office — to cater to Procter & Gamble (P&G) in the UK. The move comes after P&G announced that is to reduce its marketing spend by $2bn over the next five years, in addition to $600m of previously announced cuts. The London team will follow Publicis Groupe’s interdependent model, meaning that brand accounts will continue to be led by the agencies that already hold the business. 
P&G brands.

Publicis Groupe has formed a bespoke creative, media and PR team to serve the whole Procter & Gamble account in the UK.

This will create a one-stop agency shop with several agencies working on P&G brands from Saatchi & Saatchi's central London offices.

The move comes only weeks after P&G consolidated all of its media into Publicis and is part of a broader strategy to simply its agency arrangements across the world and cut its marketing budget by US$2 billion over the next five years.

The reductions include US$1 billion or more in media spend and another US$500 million on agency fees, in addition to about US$600 million of previous cuts that reduced P&G’s spending to around US$1.4 billion annually.

P&G has already cut a third of its creative and production fees globally. It estimates 95% of its creative work is handled by about 20% of its agencies but global marketing boss Marc Pritchard says the long tail of the other 80% is still too long.

Digital media is firmly in the cross hairs of Pritchard. P&G revealed it is breaking up its Hawkeye programmatic digital media buying operation, which includes ditching its original tech provider AudienceScience in favour of using different vendors regionally, such as Neustar and The Trade Desk.

UK restructure

This has motivated P&G to return to a full-service model, like the repositioning in the UK where all of its agencies will be housed under the one roof.

This includes moving talent from Leo Burnett, Publcis Worldwide, Publicis Media and MSL into Saatchi & Saatchi London’s Chancery Lane office, according to Campaign.

The new team will follow Publicis Groupe’s interdependent model, which means that each brand account will continue to be led the agencies that currently hold the business.

What this means for Australia

In Australia, MediaCom has the $50 media account and won a three-year extension of the business with the addition of P&G New Zealand late last year.

The creative for most P&G brands are produced overseas. WPP's Grey has several P&G brands on its books including Ambi Pur, Gillette and Pantene. AdNews understands that Ogilvy also carries out local work for P&G and MediaCom, which has a creative arm, can also make creative variations.

P&G underwent regional pitching and consolidation in parts of Asia-Pacific late last year. AdNews is not aware of any plans to change the model in Australia.

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