Nestlé corrals holding companies into hybrid buying unit, threatens walled gardens

Industry Contributor 25 Nov 2019 - 2 min read

Nestlé corrals holding companies into hybrid buying unit, threatens walled gardens

By Paul McIntyre - Executive Editor

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Tags: Nestle, advertising data, programmatic, Dentsu, IPG, Publicis, WPP

Nestlé has corralled roster agencies from the big four ad holding groups into a single hybrid media buying team. It threatens to punish those that do not meet higher transparency standards, even the big walled gardens (The Drum).

Key points

Global Digital Media Center of Competencies (DCoC) unit uses internal and agency staff from Dentsu, IPG, Publicis and WPP
Aim is to get better results and more transparent outcomes
Nestlé realises it cannot take everything in house
“There's no way we can keep investing to the level we are... it's not satisfactory for us. We are changing that now with the new model.” – Nestlé global head of sales and e-business, Sebastien Szczepaniak

There's a similar sound emitting from global and local marketing teams: in-housing is actually hard to do, keep quality talent and continue investing tech systems and tools to keep pace with broader market developments. Wholesale in-sourcing of agency services looks like an exception versus hybrid models with agency, consulting and holding groups all in the mix.

Three years in to its ad data overhaul, Nestlé might just have landed on the solution that delivers the requisite firepower while keeping agencies onside.