Unilever ice creams sweet on Whybin TBWA

Unilever has hired Whybin TBWA to work across its multimillion dollar ice cream account without a pitch.
Whybin has been appointed on a project-by-project basis, with the possibility of becoming a retained agency. The agency begins work immediately on the Magnum, Cornetto and Splice brands.

Unilever ice creams sweet on Whybin TBWAWhybin TBWA Group Sydney chief executive Paul Bradbury said: "We have enormous respect for Unilever and their portfolio of Australia’s best loved brands. We look forward to achieving great things working with their marketing and agency teams."

Unilever adopts a two-part marketing approach, in which it splits "regional brand development" and "local brand building". Whybin has been appointed to the local brand building element of the Unilever ice cream account.

Lowe handles the regional brand development portion of the account, however this is through a regional and global alignment. While this alignment involves Lowe Sydney, it is unclear just how much direct involvement the agency has on the ice cream account, because a lot of the regional brand development work comes into Australia from other markets.

Apart from Lowe and Whybin, the Unilever ice cream account works with digital agency Soap, which also handles other Unilever categories, and Mindshare, which handles media planning and buying for the entire Unilever business.

The appointment was predominantly overseen by VP of marketing for Australasia Peter Boone. Since his arrival at Unilever at the end of last year, Boone has been developing a number of agency relationships. He appointed Mindshare as Unilever’s media agency earlier in the year, and has also started working on a project basis with Droga5 on the Lynx brand.

Unilever estimated main media spend in the 12 months to June 2011 was $70.7 million, down from $81.8 million in the prior period, according to Nielsen. The company spent $6.4 million and $1.1 million on the Streets Magnum Ice Cream and Cornetto brands respectively in the year to June 2011, while spending nothing on the Splice brand.