Molson Coors has put its Canadian beer account into review, ending a seven-year relationship with Crispin Porter + Bogusky Canada.
Molson hired what was then Zig in late 2004. Since then the tandem have come up with a number of different brand positionings.
Molson confirmed the change in an e-mail to Marketing late Tuesday afternoon:
“We are in fact conducting an agency review for the Molson Canadian business. We’re in the earliest stages of this process and are in the midst of compiling a preliminary list of partners we’d like to speak with. It’s a natural course of our business to be continually evaluating the health of our brands and performance of our agency partners. As such, we’re now in diagnostics mode whereby we’re assessing our present and future business needs. It bears sharing that CP&B, and their legacy Zig team, have been committed partners of ours for a long time and have been instrumental in helping us resuscitate the Molson Canadian brand through their work in support of our new ‘Made from Canada’ positioning. We’re fortunate to have had such an excellent partnership and are also looking forward to what the future may have in store for this brand.”
And CP+B confirmed it would not pitch to retain the account in an e-mail from Jeff Steinhour, president of CP+B:
“We are privileged to have partnered with Molson Canadian for the past seven years, during which time we were able to reverse their decline in sales and significantly grow the brand for the first time in a decade. We’re extremely proud of the work and success we’ve had together, however we do not pitch existing accounts. In the meantime, there will be no layoffs or changes at the agency as a result of our parting. We remain great friends and wish Molson Canadian much success going forward.”
Details of the review’s timing and participants were not available at press time.
