by Herman Manson (@marklives) The Old Mutual business, currently held by FCB Africa, is out to pitch. The agency was appointed in 2009 and its current contract comes to an end in March 2017. Old Mutual offers personal, business and corporate investment solutions, unit trusts, retirement funds, risk cover and financial services. It is also a 54% shareholder in Nedbank Group.
According to spokesperson, Ursula van der Westhuizen, the Barclays Africa account won by FCB Africa from The Jupiter Drawing Room (Johannesburg) in late 2016 means that its services are no longer available to Old Mutual.
Closed RFP process
Van der Westhuizen has confirmed that the group is in a closed request for proposal (RFP) process and will not share any further information at this stage.
Industry insiders have suggested that Ogilvy & Mather South Africa (which held the account prior to FCB), Publicis Groupe, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris and J. Walter Thompson (JWT) are all in the running for the business.
According to the latest data available from Nielsen, Old Mutual spends roughly R349m on advertising a year and is South Africa’s 24th biggest advertising advertiser.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com. He was the founding editor of media.toolbox (1998–2006) and Mobile.Works, and the co-founder of Brand magazine. He has served on the editorial boards of The Journal for Convergence, as well as of Fast Company South Africa. Winner of the 2011 Vodacom Social Media Journalist of the Year award, he was also a finalist twice in the Highway Africa Award for the Innovative Use of New Media in Africa (2003 and 2004). Over his 20-year-plus career, Herman has contributed to numerous journals and websites in South Africa and abroad, including the Mail & Guardian, .net, Intelligence, AdVantage, Men’s Health, Computer World and African Communications. He has consulted on web architecture to several financial institutions.
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