Vickers & Benson Advertising of Toronto takes over the Canadian portion of the British Airways business, worth $us95 million worldwide.

v&b is working with the winner of the worldwide assignment British-based The New Saatchi Agency, set up in January by Maurice Saatchi, in partnership with the Publicis global agency network. Neither company has a Canadian presence.

British Airways, previously a global account of Saatchi & Saatchi, was put into review earlier this year following the forced resignation of agency co-founder Maurice Saatchi in December 1994.

John Hayter, president of v&b, says the agency will find out soon if it will also be handling Qantas Airlines, also previously with s&s and now with tnsa.

Hayter says he wrote to Maurice Saatchi in January suggesting that he had a great agency in Canada to fill out his network but was told Saatchi was going to set up a formal agreement with an agency network rather than work with independents.

‘When I heard Publicis was going to be their formal agency network, I called Publicis in New York because we had worked with them a bit with FCA Bloom, a u.s. agency acquired by Publicis,’ says Hayter.

‘They were just about to call me. I went to New York and sent a lot of materials to London and everyone agreed we would be the right agency.

‘I think more than anything else, we had the tenacity to keep going and pushing.’ PS