Why Havas Wasted Its Time Pitching WPP's U.K. Danone Account
Why did Havas’ MPG unit bother to pitch Danone Group’s £25 million media business in the U.K.? Ever since WPP’s Mediaedge:CIA won the account last week, this question has been nagging me. It is no secret that in December of last year WPP acquired Danone’s customer relations management unit, and Danone in turn appointed Y&R Brands to head its CRM efforts in France.
That’s right: acquired, not hired. WPP literally bought the client’s customer-focused operations (they can be anything from call center helplines to lists of customers who like to redeem coupons). The network has thus had a year to pore over all the customer data that acquisition will have provided it. The Danone-WPP connection doesn’t end there. In addition to France, WPP already worked with Danone in Hungary, Romania and Turkey.
Despite knowing that WPP was already an integral part of Danone’s operations, it pitched the account anyway, and — predictably — lost.
Kudos to WPP chief Martin Sorrell. His acquisition is already paying dividends.
BNET previously noted the importance of dominating your clients’ CRM ops here and here. If your agency can burrow itself as deep inside the client host as possible, you become impossible to fire and dangerous to annoy.
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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