Rothco has picked up the creative account for eir and Meteor in a surprise move that sees DDFH&B ending its five-year long relationship with the telecommunications company by mutual agreement.
DDFH&B’s contract with eir finishes at the end of January.
The surprise appointment of Rothco comes against a backdrop of one of the most prolonged and intriguing pitch-processes in recent years which saw a number of agencies in Dublin and London pitch for the eir account.
Rothco, however, was not involved in the initial pitch process after it resigned from the Meteor account last February. Pending the appointment of a new marketing director at eir, the pitch process concluded with the incumbent DDFH&B being appointed in a care-taker capacity with a brief to develop the group’s Christmas campaigns.
Since DDFH&B first won the eir account five years ago, it has worked on a number of high profile and award winning campaigns for the company as well its rebrand to eir and the launch of eir Sport and its GAA sponsorship.
“The last five years has seen DDFH&B work on a number of great campaigns for eir and we will continue to work on live campaigns and other projects until early next year. It has been a great partnership and we wish the team at eir with whom we have worked closely with the very best for the future,” according to Miriam Hughes, CEO of DDFH&B.
Since the recent appointment of Henry Dummer as group marketing director of eir, it is understood that separate negotiations between eir and Rothco have been taking place and these were concluded over the past two weeks. Dummer is a former marketing director of Tesco Ireland, a Rothco client.
“DDFH&B has been a strategic partner to eir for the past five years for all our advertising needs and in that time has created memorable and award winning campaigns that has supported the growth of the business and the evolution of eir’s offering from a traditional telco to a quad-play operator offering great content to its customers. Their insight, creativity and professionalism have been the hallmarks of their client service and, on behalf of the team at eir would like to thank them for their individual and collective efforts and wish them well for the future,” says Henry Dummer.
The decision to award the creative contract to Rothco, however, will not impact on eir’s relationship with The Reputations Agency, part of the DDFH&B group, which won a competitive tender and it will continue to advise eir Group on all corporate, retail, business and wholesale accounts.
