The Carat Media network with Nigeria’s Carat MP as its local affiliate has emerged as the Pan African agency for Strategy and Coordination for Diageo Guinness’ media business in Africa.
It will be recalled that the protracted Guinness media pitch which opened in 2011 had featured the incumbent Media Reach OMD, Carat MP and Mediacom among others. However, the Guinness management was not persuaded by the outcome of the pitch as the agencies did not demonstrate convincing capability in markets across Africa especially in East Africa, investigation reveals.
The agencies were therefore allowed a break from the pitch to “go and strengthen their competencies in East Africa”. This perhaps explains the very long duration for the pitch.
The pitch later re-opened earlier this year with a well defined business arrangement which clearly maps out two levels of responsibilities. These are a “Pan African agency” and a “best in class” in the respective markets. The arrangement clearly shows two levels of pitches for the multi-million pounds media business.
The first part was recently concluded with Carat winning the brief for African wide business which entails leading and coordinating the Guinness’ media business strategy across the sub-sahara Africa markets like Nigeria, Cameroun and Kenya among others.
However, the second leg of the business will come before the end of the year. According to sources, the pitch will be expected to produce the best agency to handle the business in the local markets as the “best-in-class” agency keying into the strategy and direction as led by Carat.
Investigations reveal that the next pitch will feature Media Reach OMD, Carat MP and Mediacom. Whoever emerges will work with Carat Sub Sahara Africa on strategy implementation and buying.
Each of these agencies comes with enormous wealth of experience on the business. Tolu Ogunkoya led MediaReach has been on the business in Nigeria for about a decade which demonstrate great understanding of the brand. Mediacom led by Dr. Ken Oyeali-Ikpe had also worked on the business in Nigeria. In the same token, Emeka Okeke’s Carat MP which must have had key strategic contributions to the Carat’s Sub-saharan business victory, is replete with brewing industry experience having worked for Guinness’ arch-rival in the Nigerian market.
Contrary to information that the business has moved, www.brandcrunch.com.ng can confirm that the business is still officially domiciled with the incumbent, MediaREach OMD. However, the pitch for Guinness Nigeria media will hold much later while a new custodian for the media business is expected in November.
It will be recalled that brandcrunch had reported in November 2011 that following on the decision of the Diageo’s Guinness’ Nigerian nay African office’s decision to review its media business, three media specialist agencies are set to contest the multi-million pounds denominated media business.
Writing under the headline “Three Agencies, Two Networks Contest Guinness’ Media Pie in Africa” the pitch was reported to cover a significant part of the company’s Advertising and Promotions budget (A & P), covers the company’s media related business with a span covering the entire Africa.{fcomments on}