KBS Toronto has been named Canadian agency of record for Unilever‘s Magnum Ice Cream brand and social AOR for Unilever Refreshments.
Magnum has earned a name for itself as a luxury dessert brand with innovative activations like its “Pleasure Store” pop-up shop, created by Mosaic with Oglivy & Mather leading social and digital initiatives, and its star-studded “Good as Gold” product launch for Magnum Gold last year. KBS’s new mandate is to develop and execute an integrated activation platform for Magnum, revolving around social and creative content.
Maura Cowan, marketing manager at Unilever Canada, said KBS stood out from other review candidates for its creative work and for the social data insights it offered. She said KBS was best positioned to develop an overall content strategy for Magnum, and to help Unilever’s brands react in real-time to newsbytes and events.
“We thought KBS would be a great partner to leverage our global assets as well as help us develop some local content that was really relevant to Canadians,” she said.
As social AOR for Unilever Refreshments, a newly created role on the CPG’s agency roster, KBS will develop social and creative content for Fruttare, Lipton, Red Rose, Klondike and Popsicle. Cowan said this is the first time Unilever will be able to have a “laser focused approach” on each of those brands.
“What I’ve seen from KBS is how they approach getting insights in the digital space — both monitoring and measuring them, and turning those into creative and content. It’s really about … understanding the metrics that a lot of agencies use, but then taking those metrics and turning them into actionable insights to drive the specific brand’s objectives.”
KBS Toronto president Nick Dean said the agency plans to apply a blend of social and content to create unique social strategies tailored to each brand’s objectives.
“The combination of KBS and Capital C this year gave us the ability to bring a really strong social footprint, along with a strong creative footprint,” said Dean, referring to the agency merge that took place earlier this year. “Capital C had a long history working with Unilever. It’s a brand that we’re very proud to be associated with.”
KBS also works with Unilever as activation AOR for Dove and events AOR for Becel.
Over the past year, KBS Toronto has been building up its social and creative resources. This summer it opened a Canadian arm of Attention, a search and social data analysis shop acquired by MDC in 2009. Dean said Attention’s data team works with KBS’s creative direction to give the agency an edge.
Unilever and KBS said they will debut the first new campaign for Magnum in spring 2015.
