Major Perth ad accounts up for grabs

SOME of Western Australia's heftiest advertising accounts are up for grabs as RAC Insurance and Ikea WA put their account out to pitch, adding to the current Burswood Entertainment Complex pitch.

This follows the HBF account's recent move from 303 Advertising to Meerkats and the Curtin University account moving from Gatecrasher to The Brand Agency.

303 also lost East Perth Redevelopment Authority to Rare Creativethinking last July.

Ikea launched the pitch after an 11-year relationship with 303, while RAC may be ending a 17-year relationship with incumbent The Brand Agency.

303 managing director Alan Taylor said that it was agreed with Ikea that the company would launch a tender process following the opening of their new store.

RAC, which topped WA Business News past two Branding Surveys, launched a tender across its entire brand portfolio, including motoring, travel and insurance as its contract with The Brand Agency comes to an end at the end of the calendar year.

With HBF recently going to Meerkats and EPRA to Rare Creativethinking, smaller agencies seem to have been preferred in recent tenders.

"Perth is a small market... The three big agencies eventually have an insurance client, a banking client, a utility and so on. So naturally, clients find it difficult to change from one big agency to another because of conflicting accounts," Meerkats creative director Mike Edmonds told WA Business News.

"Smaller agencies, particularly ones with a philosophy that fits a client's own set of beliefs, become more appealing to them.

"Also, now that many of the services clients went to the big agencies for...are available to any buyer, there is an almost global trend of large clients moving to smaller agencies where they can get the services they require but also receive the kind of intimate senior service they went to the big agency for in the first place," he said.

"A recent example is Pepsi taking their $1.2 billion rebranding campaign out of longtime agency BBDO and giving it to the small Arnell Group."