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Business on the Move British Gas Centrica

British Gas owner Centrica retains WPP with new cross-agency team for global brief

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By Rebecca Stewart, Trends Editor

July 9, 2019 | 3 min read

British Gas owner Centrica has appointed a WPP cross-agency team to handle a new "integrated marketing operating model".

Penguin from British Gas advert looking at a smart meter

Centrica's kicked off a global pitch for its marketing and media business in January 2019 / British Gas

Bringing to a close a six-month-long pitch, the set-up will see The&Partnership take on creative, Wunderman Thompson handle CRM and MediaCom deal with media buying and strategy.

It's understood that Publicis Groupe and a McCann Worldgroup-led team made it to the final stages of the media pitch.

However, WPP pitched a bespoke offering, dubbed, 'Team Nucleus', which will have staff pooled in offices in each of the businesses' key markets, which include North America, the UK and Ireland.

The&Partnership was already the incumbent on the UK creative account, as was MediaCom was for UK media (worth £55m when last reviewed in 2016).

Ogilvy, which had handled CRM for Centrica for 12 years, has lost business as a result of the move towards a global model.

A Centrica spokesperson said: “Following a thorough pitch process, we are pleased to confirm that WPP will become our new global marketing agency partner for all of Centrica’s consumer marketing.

"The new integrated model will bring together a cohesive strategy for all our global brands and ensure our marketing efforts are more effective in meeting our customer’s changing needs.”

The pitch was managed by ID Comms, with British Gas saying at the time that it wanted to select a marketing communications partner who would support it on a "journey of transformation as well as driving creativity and innovation."

The Drum has reached out to WPP, but at the time of writing it had not responded.

Business on the Move British Gas Centrica

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