WPP wins Unilever media account in China

Media giants Mindshare and PHD have wrestled for the Unilever account for years, but the latter has decided to appoint WPP to take over its US$500 million media account in China from PHD.
Unilever China decided to nominate WPP China because the company chargeable for planning and shopping for all paid media in mainland China. The appointment will be with effect from end of this year.
The incumbent, PHD however will continue to carry Unilever’s media accounts in Taiwan and Hong Kong, together with Australia and New Zealand in the Asia Pacific region.
PHD first gained the Unilever media account from Mindshare in 2009 and had retained this account following evaluations conducted every 3 years. However at the end of 2017, Unilever moved world comms planning to Mindshare from PHD and not using an evaluation.
China is obviously going back to business, and Unilever has been quick out to award its highly-prized mainland media account to WPP.
Recently appointed Unilever CEO Alan Jope said he planned to work with ad holding companies – not a universally popular stance in some circles – but WPP has won big here. It presumably did not hurt that former Unilever CMO Keith Weed now sits on WPP’s board.
WPP launched a ‘Team Unilever’ in-house partnership with the FMCG giant in Singapore in 2018. Mindshare is a global media agency network with billings in excess of US$34.5 billion and it is part of GroupM, which oversees the media investment management sector for WPP, the world’s leading communications services group.