Dive Brief:
- Kimberly-Clark has named Accenture Interactive as its lead creative agency for baby and child care products, according to The Wall Street Journal. The markets covered include the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
- This is the first major account scored by Accenture Interactive, the consulting firm Accenture's advertising and marketing division, by leveraging Droga5, the creative agency it announced it was acquiring in April.
- The new agency choice replaces WPP PLC in the selected markets, while WPP retains Asia-Pacific and Canada. The agency for the Latin American market is still to be announced. Additionally, WPP's Mindshare agency will handle the media responsibilities worldwide.
Dive Insight:
Kimberly-Clark's Chief Growth Officer Alison Lewis told the Journal that Accenture Interactive won the account because of technology the brand hadn't seen before, and because of Droga5's creative capabilities, underscoring the potential for further growth inherent in Accenture's push to combine its technology and consulting expertise with the creative know-how of a storied agency like Droga5.
When Accenture Interactive announced the Droga5 acquisition, it promoted the idea that while both companies were born in the digital age, the merging of the two would lead to "a new agency model" focused on customer experiences over traditional advertising. The Droga5 acquisition in April, for a reported $475 million, was the largest of several agency purchases Accenture Interactive has made in recent years, including Fjord, Karmarama, The Monkeys and SinnerSchrader.
Droga5 previously created award-winning work for such clients as Amazon Prime Video, IHOP, HBO's "Game of Thrones," Chase, Kraft, Hershey and Under Armour.
The Kimberly-Clark win caps a year where Accenture Interactive is forecast to boost revenue by more than 20%. Kimberly-Clark's baby and child care products include brands like Pull-Ups, GoodNites and Huggies, for which the parent company spent $83.7 million in advertising last year, exclusive of social media keyword search, per Kantar data cited by the Journal.
The choice of Accenture Interactive represents another breakthrough for the consulting firms that have been developing marketing, customer experience and design units in recent years. Like Accenture, Deloitte LLP and PwC LLP have added staff and acquired creative agencies with the goal of competing against established ad/marketing giants like WPP, Omnicom Group and Interpublic. For the most part, legacy agency holding groups are struggling to deliver growth as they work through efforts to become more efficient, in part by integrating technology into organizations built around creativity and not data or analytics.
