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In
what it calls the biggest advertising tie-up of its kind in
the UK, Unilever has signed a £320 million ($460 million)
deal with UK broadcasters Carlton Communications and Granada
to promote its brands.
The company has committed to paying £320 million over four
years to promote its household brands, including Birds Eye
and Persil, on ITV1. The four-year deal forms part of the
Anglo-Dutch FMCG behemoth's Path to Grow strategy aimed
at concentrating its resources behind its focused portfolio
of leading brands that range from Persil, Dove, Lynx and Sure
to Flora, Hellmann's, Knorr, PG Tips, Birds Eye Frozen Foods
and Walls Ice Cream to Calvin Klein Cosmetics.
Unilever's Indian arm Hindustan Lever appears to have modelled
its own "power brands" strategy where 90 per cent of the company's
ad spend is directed towards 30 "power brands" on the Unilever
model. Launched in 1999, a leading objective of Unilever's
Path to Growth is to whittle its brands to 400 from
1600 by 2004.
Unilever is the UK's largest advertiser (as is Hindustan Lever
in India) and Carlton and Granada run the UK's biggest commercial
TV network ITV which has been hit by the current TV advertising
slump and the failure of its pay-TV venture ITV Digital. Advertising
on ITV is up on an annual basis for the first time this month
and should show year-on-year growth of around 6 per cent in
June.
The deal will reportedly buy Unilever a huge slab of airtime
to promote its top brands like Persil, Lynx deodorant and
Magnum ice-cream on prime-time television. The three parties
have been reportedly in talks since the start of the year
and the deal has been backdated to 1 January. It will run
until the end of 2005.
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