Newell hires Crossmedia for global media account

Newell Brands has named Crossmedia as its global media agency of record following a review, consolidating assignments that had been assigned to several shops led by independent Empower. The marketer of Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Yankee Candle, Graco, Ball and Mr. Coffee spent $371 million on advertising globally last year, per financial reports released last week. The company markets 80 brands overall, with a U.S. measured-media outlay of $60 million in 2022 and $17 million in the first half of 2023, according to Vivvix with paid social data from Pathmatics. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here Simplifying what historically has been a complex assignment, the company is focusing resources primarily on its 25 biggest brands, said Melanie Huet, president of brand management and innovation for Newell. Cincinnati-based incumbent Empower and Newell parted ways last year, but the assignment also encompasses smaller assignments previously handled by other shops, Huet said. Also read: Empower staffers leave agency for P&G Newell has been going through a hard time, with global revenue down 14% last year to $8.1 billion due primarily to distribution losses and category exits in its home and commercial businesses, the company reported. Focus on the top 25 brands is part of its turnaround plan, and Crossmedia will be part of that. “When I got here, I realized that our media buying was disparate across multiple agencies, mostly digital marketing agencies, not a true media partner, and that we had a huge opportunity to find one partner that could help us unlock our data,” said Huet, who was hired into Newell’s top marketing job last April. “Prior to Crossmedia, we weren’t really connecting our media buying or insights. We buy across several media channels, and none of that data was being viewed as one, holistically.” “Consolidation generally leads to the idea that you’re just going to get more media more cheaply,” said Kamran Asghar, CEO of Crossmedia. “Of course we’re going to leverage the spend across brands.” But he said he also sees the consolidation as “media orchestration” where data and audiences can be managed centrally and uniform measurement is put in place across brands to measure performance across the portfolio. Also read: One in four top advertisers plan agency consolidations “Integration is kind of a lost art these days,” Asghar said. But it’s needed, particularly for Newell, where creative is done between a mix of in-house and outside agencies, to help manage messaging across media and touchpoints. “There’s nothing but upside for the business in terms of how they operationalize media going forward,” Asghar said. Of particular priority is focusing on influencers in channels such as TikTok as sales for most Newell brands shift increasingly online, Huet said. “We had to get a lot smarter with our media spend and strategy, so it was just an easy decision to know that we needed a partner like Crossmedia to help us.” Crossmedia is a global independent that’s been on Ad Age’s Best Places to Work list for five years running. One of its hallmarks long has been avoiding principal deals commonly used by holding company media shops, in which agencies resell to clients media they acquire, rather than acting as agents. That policy is one of the factors that figured in the decision to go with Crossmedia, Huet said. Crossmedia will do fully disclosed principal deals if clients want them, Asghar said. “We do have a mechanism in place to offer clients access to below-marked [priced] inventory in a fully disclosed, triple opt-in, triple bid process,” he said. “It’s a way for us to combat the opaque, principal-based buying deals that are occurring.” Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here

Newell hires Crossmedia for global media account

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