Assignment Group has won the creative account for premium dairy brand Kapiti, following a competitive pitch thought to have involved several agencies.
“We’re delighted to be working with Fonterra Brands and helping grow their premium dairy brand Kapiti,” says Martin Yeoman, the managing director at Assignment. “Our team have done a lot of great work over the years with Fonterra, and previously New Zealand Dairy Foods, so it’s good to continue the journey.”
Yeoman was asked which other agencies were involved in the pitch, but he declined to comment on account of being asked not to disclose this information.
Assignment Group has in the past worked with Lewis Road Creamery (which was launched by Assignment Group co-founder Peter Cullinane).* However, Yeoman says that Assignment no longer works with the premium dairy business, and that Cullinane has no involvement in the Kapiti business.
“Fonterra has very high standards around conflicts – and we were able to satisfy them there was no issue,” Yeoman says.
It’s also worth noting that there won’t be too much conflict between the two brands in that Lewis Road Creamery doesn’t sell the Kapiti staples of ice cream or cheese. However, Cullinane previously told NZ Marketing (as part of a profile published in the November/December edition) that he intended to move down the dairy aisle and hopes to do ice cream, yoghurt and clotted cream in the future.
Until August 2013, the Kapiti account was penned into the ledger of Shine, along with Fonterra’s other sub-brands Mammoth, Symbio and Anchor Fast Start. Then, upon winning the Goodman Fielder account, Shine was forced to let the Fonterra business go due to a conflict of interests.
Fonterra shifted these brands into the Colenso stable of business, which already included the co-operative’s major brands Tip Top and Anchor.
It’s understood that this was only a temporary solution and that Fonterra had always intended to move the Kapiti brand to a boutique-styled agency in an effort to keep it separate from the major brands.
Colenso chief executive Nick Garrett says that the agency has not done any substantial creative work on the Kapiti account over the last two years and that it was not involved in the pitch for the account. He goes on to say that the change does not affect the agency’s business partnership with Fonterra—which has seen work on the account approximately double over the last year and a half— and that the team is focused on several major global projects at the moment.
Fonterra’s global ambitions were also evident last year, when it shifted its local media account from OMD to MediaCom. This move was not only significant because it was first time in seven years that Fonterra has moved its business from one agency to another but also because MediaCom had previously won the company’s $150 million media planning and buying business across ten markets in the Asia Pacific and Middle East.
*Correction: this story previously incorrectly stated that Lewis Road Creamery is a current client of Assignment Group.
