Heineken to leverage global scale by consolidating media buying for its brands

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Heineken announced today that it is to consolidate media planning and buying for its brands worldwide into one media agency. Two agencies, Publicis’ Starcom MediaVest and WPP’s MindShare, have been shortlisted. The selected agency will be tasked with maximizing the effectiveness of the company’s world-class brand building and fully utilizing the company’s increased buying power. Heineken plans to have the new agency in place by the middle of 2012.

Heineken already works with both agencies in the majority of its regions. Both have the capability to provide a global service and have the scale to give Heineken the improved performance the company is looking for in all its brands. The chosen agency, in first instance, will focus on Heineken’s top fifteen markets (1), which represent 85% of the company’s media spend.

Alexis Nasard, Chief Commercial Officer at Heineken said: “Heineken is the world’s most international brewer. We have the opportunity to leverage the benefits of our global scale to achieve efficiencies and quality improvements in our media buying.” He added: “The ultimate goal is to improve our media performance through better strategy, planning and execution, while maintaining the absolute requirement for stand-out brand communication in all channels we choose to focus and operate in.’’

The move to globalize media buying is in line with a number of other initiatives across several aspects of the company’s business designed to leverage its global scale, including the appointment of a global advertising agency for the Heineken brand and the creation of the Global Business Services organization.