Exclusive: Smarts takes full Heineken UK trade press account from New Shield
Smarts has been appointed to handle all of Heineken UK’s trade PR following the company’s move to ‘consolidate’ its communications after the acquisition of Scottish & Newcastle.
The Heineken UK trade activity will now be fully run by Smarts in Scotland, moving from PR agency New Shield, which only won the account following a competitive pitch in January from incumbent Salt, after seven years.
David Jones, press and PR manager for S&N UK told The Drum that the move was not as a result of New Shield’s work, praising the Epsom based agency; “The decision has been made following Heineken’s business and S&N’s UK business merging. Heineken UK had entered into an agreement at the beginning of this year with New Shield to look after Heinekin in the on and off trade. It makes more sense to move the full account into one place and as Smarts has the lion’s share of our portfolio we consolidated it all into that agency.”
In a letter to the trade press, Jones said that all future enquiries should be made to Emma Diamond, senior account manager at Smarts or another of the agency’s account team.
Shirley Braithwaite, managing director of Newshield, commented; "When we were appointed, Newshield PR's brief was to bring a fresh approach to trade communications and increase Heineken's profile within the trade press. During our short tenure we have already achieved some good results and this has been acknowledged by Heineken UK. We've enjoyed working with the Heineken team and clearly we would have liked the opportunity to continue to develop their communications programme further. However, the integration process which has seen Heineken absorbed into the S&N business has, understandably, led to the decision to consolidate the Heineken trade PR function within S&N's incumbent agency."