BAA doubles its number of agencies for retail comms

GCI London, Neville McCarthy Associates and Rowland Communications have joined BAA's two incumbent agencies - Kavanagh Communications and Pirate Communications - on the newly created roster after a pitch process that kicked off last autumn (PRWeek, 27 September).

Each of the additional agencies will handle project work, with GCI already having been appointed to handle trade media relations for the media@BAA division, which promotes advertising space in airports. This was work formerly handled by Pirate.

Kavanagh and Pirate have worked for BAA for eight-and-a-half years and two years, respectively.

The former has been retained to handle promotional and media relations work, including the operation of a dedicated press office for BAA's retail division.

Likewise, Pirate's erstwhile remit - which mainly comprises PR for BAA.com - will continue in a similar vein to before the repitch.

Marcoms managing director Emma Cantrill leads the account team at GCI London. At Rowland the account team is led by associate director Holly Barron; MD Dominic McCarthy will head up the work at Neville McCarthy.

The agencies are likely to report on a day-to-day basis to BAA retail internal comms manager Andrew Cringle.

However, the compilation of the roster was co-ordinated by BAA group director of retail Brian Collie and BAA group marketing director Barbara Beckett.

Neville McCarthy is also retained on a consumer PR remit by designer factory outlets firm McArthur Glen, whose joint venture with BAA was dissolved in August last year as part of BAA's strategy to exit non-core airport interests.