Havas Picks Up Liberty Mutual Creative Account; Optimedia Wins Media

Liberty Mutual has selected Havas Worldwide, New York, as its creative agency and Publicis Groupe's Optimedia as its media agency, according to multiple executives. The Boston-based company had worked with Interpublic's Hill Holliday since 2005 for creative and media, and it's believed that the agency will retain a piece of the insurer's Olympics-related business. Aside from Havas and Hill Holliday, Dentsu's McGarryBowen and Interpublic's Mullen also participated in the creative review, which launched in June. WPP's Mediacom also competed in the media review. Hill Holiday and Havas declined to comment. Optimedia referred calls to Liberty Mutual, which did not immediately respond to calls for comment. Boston-based Pile & Co. oversaw the process. The media and creative reviews were handled separately. Liberty Mutual is one of the bigger accounts to go up for review this year. The marketer spent about $160 million in U.S. measured media last year, with nearly $70 million of that amount allocated toward auto insurance, according to Kantar Media. This year, between January and September, the company spent $132 million. The company's "Humans" campaign -- which uses Human League's "Human" song as the soundtrack --positions the insurer as sympathetic to the fact that mistakes happen even to the most responsible people. Although Hill Holliday is retaining a piece of the business, the loss of the majority of the account is a blow to the agency. The loss is mitigated, though, by the win of Cadillac, which went to a new Interpublic cohort of agencies, Rogue, that included Hill Holliday, Campbell Ewald and Lowe in June. Liberty Mutual is a big win for Optimedia, which also picked up the media business for dairy company Lactalis and German personal-care products company SCA in recent months.

Havas Picks Up Liberty Mutual Creative Account; Optimedia Wins Media

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