JM Smucker consolidates creative and media accounts with Publicis
The JM Smucker Company has consolidated its creative, data, media, and tech accounts and handed the combined operation to Publicis Groupe.
Smuckers hands Publicis integrated account
The US-based JM Smucker, which produces pantry items including Smucker’s Jams & Jellies and Jif Peanut Butter, invited only holding companies to pitch, The Drum has learned.
Publicis beat WPP and IPG for the integrated account, according to a source close to the deal. The client previously had its accounts scattered across an array of holding companies.
Publicis will work end-to-end across all of Smucker’s brands and categories from 1 January 2019. The group pulled together talent from across its portfolio to create a bespoke Smucker agency and win the pitch.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Publicis team pitched together without telling the brand which shops they came from to demonstrate true integration.
The win forms part of JM Smucker's revamp of its marketing model, which will see its internal marketing operations consolidated into three teams: coffee, consumer foods, and pet food and snacks. Publicis will create a trio of agency teams to support these business units.
In an internal memo seen by The Drum, Publicis’ chairman and chief executive Arthur Sadoun called the result a win for the Publicis ‘Power of One’ model. The structure and presiding ethos is designed to offer clients greater marketing and media integration across the board.
Sadoun added that Publicis won the Smucker pitch by a virtually unanimous vote.
JM Smucker's decision to consolidate flies in the face of recent changes by clients such as Ford and Bank of America. Both brands recently dismantled their bespoke integrated agencies to return to a more varied approach to account buying among several holding companies.
“We are thrilled to have a business partner the caliber of Publicis so invested in the success of our business,” said Mark Smucker, president and chief executive of JM Smucker. “The introduction of a single holding company partner allows us to truly embed them into our business, both at a strategic and an operational level.”