WPP forms Red Fuse to handle Colgate-Palmolive's $1.26 bn global account

WPP forms Red Fuse to handle Colgate-Palmolive's $1.26 bn global account

MUMBAI: WPP‘s five agencies, which separately service Colgate-Palmolive, are combining under one operating unit to handle the world‘s 34th largest marketer with annual advertising spends of over $1.26 billion.

Red Fuse Communications will house the dedicated team sourced from Y&R, MEC, VML, Wunderman and GHG so that the health and personal care brand can get holistic attention.

WPP global managing partner (the current in charge of the Colgate account) Steve Forcione will function as the CEO for Red Fuse.

Says Colgate VP global advertising and digital Jack Haber, "The move to Red Fuse will allow us to focus more of our agency resources on strategy and creative. At the same time, we will be able to invest in the new areas of expertise that are now required for our campaigns to delight our consumers."

Red Fuse will have operating offices in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Kansas City and Prague for the time being and will expand to cover all geographies by mid-2013.

"WPP is merging resources from across its premiere networks into one fully dedicated and exclusive team to help Colgate win on the ground. The many excellent people who work on the account around the world are eager to move to the Red Fuse structure, so they can develop big, innovative campaigns in real time," adds Haber.

The objective of forming a dedicated unit is to fully integrate all communications to engage with consumers in real time across all touch-points and to drive efficiencies.

Says Colgate CMO Nigel Burton, "It goes without saying that we already have a close-knit partnership with our agencies. But we are excited about Red Fuse because we believe that co-locating all the partners will lead to bigger ideas and better work created and executed smarter and faster."