Another new media management company has come into Canada through the formation of Interpublic-owned Western Initiative Media, a separate division set up to handle the newly acquired $29-million Kellogg Canada media planning and buying business.
The joint venture between Toronto-based Interpublic shops Initiative Media and Western International Media will also conveniently be able to take on clients that may present a conflict with the partners’ existing clients.
Western Initiative will be staffed and managed by both Initiative and Western International, with Hugh Dow, president of Initiative, doing double duty as chairman of the new firm.
Dow also headed the team that seized Kellogg after a review that saw Leo Burnett’s Starcom lose the business after 45 years.
Dow says he believes the joint venture, which allows the media-buying organizations to pool their international resources, played a ‘major factor’ in Kellogg’s decision.
One of the major issues facing clients and agencies is figuring out where media planning should fit into the overall picture, specifically, whether it should be handled by an agency’s creative or media side. Dow says, at its best, media planning is an integral part of the creative process, one of the main reasons Western Initiative’s offices were set up within spitting distance of Kellogg’s creative agencies, Leo Burnett and J. Walter Thompson.
‘It is important to have a close or as close as possible a relationship with the creative resource,’ he says. ‘Certainly, the two disciplines shouldn’t be handled in silos.’
Speculation about the advent of Western Initiative has been rampant since last October, when Interpublic initiated the global merger of Western International Media and Initiative Media Worldwide. The consolidation didn’t kick in automatically in Canada because Initiative’s Canadian arm is owned by the McCann-Erickson side of Interpublic, under MacLaren McCann, and not by Lintas, as it is in the rest of the world.
Interpublic’s holdings include three major global agency networks – McCann-Erickson WorldGroup, Ammirati Puris Lintas and The Lowe Group – as well as four specialized units: Western Initiative Media (formerly Western International Media), Draft Worldwide, the Allied Communications Group and Octagon, its sports and event marketing unit.
At the time of the Western Initiative merger last fall, The Lowe Group announced it would expand its relationship with Western Initiative in Europe and other regions.
In Canada, Lowe Group agency Roche Macaulay & Partners will characteristically continue to follow its own road.
Paula Howell, RM&P vice-president and general manager, says the formation of Western Initiative will not change the agency’s plans and it will continue to outsource media and work with a range of media partners.
Sidebar: Coke review still unresolved
Initiative Media is also in the running for the other major media-only review that has been underway this summer – the $22-million-plus Coca-Cola Canada business.
Three other incumbents on various aspects of Coke’s business – Optimedia Canada, Leo Burnett’s Starcom and Cossette Communication-Marketing – are also on the shortlist, along with MediaVest, the media unit of Bensimon-Byrne-D’Arcy.
Early this year, rumours began to circulate about Coca-Cola Canada aligning its marketing efforts more closely with its Atlanta, Ga.-based parent. One of the stories put the money on dark horse MediaVest to win the media review race because its U.S. parent has the account south of the border.
