One of Australia's largest advertisers will increase its digital investment next year by around two thirds. Zenith Optimedia has retained the Reckitt Benckiser account, and boss Ian Perrin said online video and mobile would take a much bigger chunk of the estimated $80-$85m annual budget.
Perrin said the company was Australia's fourth largest advertiser, although for the calendar year 2012 Nielsen estimates the company was the seventh, behind Toyota ($85-$90m), the Victorian Government ($85-$90m), the Commonwealth Government ($125m-$130m), Harvey Norman ($140m-$145m), Woolworths ($165m-$170m) and Wesfarmers ($245m-$250m).
Either way, the FMCG giant will take a "strategically different direction in terms of what they will be doing" across channels according to Perrin.
The media agency, which will come under the Publicis Omnicom banner next year, is currently in negotiations with TV companies and Perrin was reluctant to state categorically that the budget being shifted into digital would come out of TV budgets. But he said that the firm would increase digital spend by at least 50% and possibly as much as two thirds.
"Reckitts is very much driven by efficiency. We've seen a drive to produce better value so the pitch was focused on strategy as much as cost," he claimed. "It will be more digitally-led with higher investment into digital channels and greater acceleration into [online video and mobile] - that's were we're trying to take things as a business."
Agencies vying to take the business from Zenith Optimedia were Carat, Havas and Initiative plus one more local agency. No GroupM companies pitched for the business because of conflict issues: Mindshare has Unilever; MediaCom has Procter & Gamble; MEC has Colgate-Palmolive; Maxus has SC Johnson and GSK.
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