Nestle has handed its Winalot dogfood brand to McCann-Erickson less
than a year after BMP DDB was appointed to handle the account.
The appointment of McCanns follows Nestle’s acquisition of Spillers
Petfoods, which owns Winalot, earlier this year. Nestle already uses
McCanns’ London office for its Friskies petfood brand.
Spillers’ other two main petfood brands, Felix and Arthur’s, remain with
BMP.
Media is not affected by the Winalot move. Last year, Spillers
centralised its pounds 10 million UK media account into BMP Optimum
following a pitch against Leo Burnett and Carat. Nestle’s pounds 2.5
million media budget for petfoods is with Universal McCann.
Nestle has set up its new European petfoods business unit at Spillers’
London office under Peter Farrant, the European marketing director,
although Spillers and Friskies are still trading as separate
companies.
The acquisition of Spillers gave Nestle around 40 per cent of the
branded petfood market in the UK.