Mellors Reay and Partners has won the race for the pounds 5 million Mr
Kipling cakes business with a brief to put fresh vigour into one of
Britain’s best-known and longest-running campaigns.
The appointment is the prelude to a TV campaign beginning early next
year which will retain the unseen Mr Kipling character and the famous
boast that he makes ‘exceedingly good cakes’.
The switch to Mellors Reay follows an acrimonious split between RHM’s
Manor Bakeries, which owns the Mr Kipling brand, and J. Walter Thompson.
Media remains with BBJ Media Services.
Manor was forced to pull the business out of JWT, which had launched Mr
Kipling 28 years ago and handled it ever since, after the agency was
secretly appointed by Kraft Jacobs Suchard to run its new Entenmann’s
cakes line (Campaign, 5 May).
Manor was angry at its jettisoning, accusing JWT of letting it down and
abandoning a long-term relationship for ‘short-term greenbacks’.
The new work complements the Manor’s Cadbury Mini Rolls account Mellors
Reay already handles. It also strengthens the link between the agency
and Colin Tether, Manor’s marketing director, who previously worked with
the agency on McVitie’s.
Tether said: ‘Mr Kipling is a critical brand for us and I had to be sure
that I was choosing the right long-term home.’
Mellors Reay was picked ahead of three other RHM roster agencies -
Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, which handles Bisto, Walsh Trott Chick Smith,
which has Sharwoods, and D’Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles, which runs the
Hovis account.
Carol Reay, the Mellors Reay managing director, confirmed that the
‘exceedingly good cakes’ line would stay in the upcoming TV campaign.
‘Our task is to pick up the baton and run with it,’ she said. ‘Mr
Kipling has advertising that’s well known and much loved.
‘We’ll remain sensitive to the famous and well-crafted advertising, but
we also want to put some new life into it.’
