Unilever realigns ice-cream tasks

Unilever has rejigged the worldwide creative agency arrangements

for three of its leading ice-cream brands as it continues to overhaul

its brand portfolio.

The Unilever subsidiary, Birds Eye Wall’s, has handed Lowe Lintas &

Partners its Solero and Calippo brands, which were previously handled by

Ogilvy & Mather and McCann-Erickson respectively, while McCann has

picked up the Carte D’Or tub ice-cream brand from Lowe Lintas.

An agency source said that Unilever was centralising its tub ice-cream

brands into McCann and its lolly brands into Lowe Lintas, which retains

responsibility for Magnum. However, Cornetto, which is handled by

McCann, is not thought to be moving.

Last year Niall Fitzgerald, the chairman of Unilever, announced that the

company was to axe up to 75 per cent of its 1,600 consumer brands,

leaving 400 so-called ’power brands’ to receive the bulk of the

company’s marketing resources.

Since then, the company has sought to reflect this dramatic strategy by

streamlining its agency arrangements around a core group of master

brands. Local so-called ’jewel’ brands are to be retained where

appropriate.

The first wave of change came early this year, when Van den Bergh Foods

called a pan-European pitch for its culinary products range.

J. Walter Thompson won a pitch against Lowe Lintas and secured about

pounds 60 million worth of business in the process (Campaign, 21

January).

Unilever is now expected to review the agency arrangements for its Lever

Brothers laundry brands.

O&M handles Comfort in some markets, while Lowe Lintas handles Snuggle,

which may be centralised into a single agency.

This article was first published on Campaign