Wunderman is poised to land the combined BT and EE direct marketing account in a final shoot-out with Proximity London, amid claims the agency is already briefing headhunters to recruit the extra staff it will need to manage the account.
Both incumbents, OgilvyOne, which handled BT and Publicis Chemistry, which ran the EE account, were booted out of the pitch at an earlier stage.
The review kicked off in August as part of BT’s plan to slash £400m in costs over the next four years. It had been on the cards ever since the proposed takeover was first announced in February last year and comes nearly 11 months after the deal was given regulatory approval.
Poke and AnalogFolk are in the running for the digital content brief.
AMV continues to hold the BT ad business, while Saatchi & Saatchi runs EE. BT has retained both media agencies, with Maxus, which handled BT and and MEC, which runs EE both reappointed. The agencies are setting up a bespoke unit called Team Connect to service the account.
Communisis continues to handle the marketing print work for both brands. by merging many of the two companies’ operations.
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