Advertising Age reported American Airlines is launching a global agency review. Before choosing its next White advertising agency, the client ought to consider making good on the message in the advertisement above.
American Airlines Launches Global Agency Review
Carrier Has Been With McCann, TM For More Than Two Decades
By Maureen Morrison
American Airlines is putting its global account into review.
The carrier has been working with Interpublic’s McCann Erickson and its agency TM in New York and Dallas for more than 20 years, an American Airlines spokeswoman said. McCann is invited to participate in the review, which is being handled by AAR.
“We remain deeply committed to American Airlines here and globally and will participate in the review,” said a McCann spokeswoman in a statement.
American expects to select an agency in early October.
American Airlines and U.S. Airways merged in December 2013, though some operational issues are still being dealt with. Just a few days ago, the company announced that it is merging all U.S. Airways reservations into the American computer system, with a targeted completion date of Oct. 17. Other steps that still need to be completed include the combining of labor groups, the painting of U.S. Airways’ planes to show American Airlines signage and the selection of uniforms. The $11 billion merger was first announced in February of 2013.
“As part of a broader objective since we entered our merger with US Airways, we have begun to do our due diligence to evaluate all major partners to ensure we are receiving competitive and effective service provisions,” said the company in a statement. “This includes advertising and marketing plans. The competitive landscape of our industry and the advertising industry has changed since the last time we put our business out for bid. We want to ensure we align ourselves with the right agency who understands our goals as the world’s largest airline and can provide the best resources and services to meet our needs globally.”
The statement continued: “We have had a partnership with TM and McCann Worldgroup for more than 20 years, and value all of the great work they have done worldwide for American Airlines. McCann and its office in Dallas, TM Advertising, continues to be an excellent global partner for American, helping us with the recent “Going for Great” campaign launched in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as Europe, Asia and Latin America with local agency teams engaged on our business.”
American Airlines’ U.S. measured media spending plummeted last year, according to Kantar Media. In 2014 the company spent $27.8 million on U.S. measured media, down from $59.7 million in 2013.
It's pointless to ever hold out hope that even a single American brand, anywhere, is ever going to give an ethnic agency a shot at being Agency of Record.
ReplyDeleteEven if they DO give them a shot, it's a wildly unfair playing field. In addition to the amount of money that some (not all) brands pay to the agencies that are bidding, the agencies are expected to put down tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own, in the form of manpower hours and blood sweat and tears, over and above that.
There's just no financial way for ethnic agencies, which are grubbing around for pennies and crumbs to start with, to compete against their non-ethnic colleagues.
The very best they can hope for is to bid alongside General Market agencies on government contracts, and hope the scraps the GM agency throws them can keep the lights on. The typical trick is the GM agencies use the ethnic agencies as a cover to land the contract, then push them aside after the ink is dry, usually in exchange for a little money.
There's just no way to compete. It's a money game, not a game of fairness or opportunities or creativity.