Whirlpool Canada, which owns the Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana and Inglis brands, has chosen Cossette Media as its media agency of record following a review.
Cossette will oversee planning and buying duties for both traditional and digital media, working with the Whirlpool’s Canadian creative agency, Red Lion.
James Oh, vice-president of marketing at Whirlpool, said his team was “very impressed with the agency’s strategic insight across all media platforms, including digital. We conducted a very thorough review and we are thrilled to have Cossette Media as our partner.”
Mike Rumble, vice-president and managing director at Cossette Media’s Toronto office, said he expects Whirlpool’s media spending to adhere to a more consumer-first approach going forward.
“I think we’re not just going to put a message in front of people’s faces anymore,” Rumble told Marketing. His team made own-able content a significant part of its pitch during the RFP. “I think we’ll see a commitment to digital and to content that people are organically looking for already, whether that’s content we produce, or a deeper integration into content already being produced. That’s how our message is going to resonate with consumers.”
Cossette Media is a division of Vision7, which is currently shopping its North American assets to potential buyers (Vision7 is owned by Connecticut-based private equity firm Mill Road Capital). The account win clearly boosts the unit’s value at a time when every pitch and business decision can have lasting effects on its future valuation.
Cossette also recently opened its Cossette Lab tech start-up incubator in Toronto, an idea it first launched at its Montreal office in 2012. Such a moves potentially gives the agency and its partners early access to nascent technology that could benefit clients months.
