Duracell Picks BBH as Lead Creative Agency and VaynerMedia as Social AOR

Duracell has two new agencies to power its marketing, picking Publicis-owned BBH USA as its new lead creative agency in the U.S. and entrusting VaynerMedia with its social marketing.

The Berkshire Hathaway-owned brand held a pitch over the summer that it ran internally to pick a new agency to replace Wieden+Kennedy. The indie agency has held the account for seven years, but the brand and agency mutually agreed to part ways earlier this year. BBH’s full scope will include designing Duracell’s brand strategy and creative platform, while also overseeing the brand’s inter-agency team, which includes VaynerMedia, Citizen Relations and media AOR EssenceMediacom.

The brand is looking to its marketing to drive relevancy with the new generation of consumers, Ramon Velutini, Duracell global CMO, told Adweek. “Batteries might be a set-it-and-forget-it purchase, but in order to really steal the hearts and minds of consumers, our marketing should be anything but.”

Velutini declined to reveal which other agencies participated in the final round or Duracell’s marketing spend, but COMvergence tracked Duracell’s marketing spend at $60 million in 2022, with $25 million of that coming through digital media.

He’s looking for “big swings” creatively, BBH CCO Erica Roberts told Adweek and explained that’s what led to BBH agreeing to participate in the pitch. “The only way to beat these headwinds is with breakthrough creative, and when you’ve got a champion like that, you’re destined to make great stuff.”

Making the CMO uncomfortable

Velutini has been with Duracell for about a decade. When he first met with BBH, he told the agency that he said just about every idea, Roberts said. With that challenge ahead, Roberts said Velutini and his team wanted to make them feel uncomfortable. “They wanted to be pushed to think about their category entirely differently and their brand entirely differently.”

They succeeded.

“Both BBH and Vayner found ways to push our brand into directions we’ve not yet considered but in a way that preserved the brand equity we’ve built over the past decades,” Velutini said.

The first work will debut this year—Roberts said there will be a holiday campaign but couldn’t share details past that, but ultimately BBH will be tasked with developing a new creative platform for the brand next spring. VaynerMedia, which has worked with Duracell on a project basis since 2022, will oversee creative work related to F1 events in Las Vegas and Austin, Texas, this fall.

“We’re thrilled to expand our partnership with Duracell. For the past 10 months, we’ve helped make Duracell relevant to new audiences through our always-on social approach,” said Lisa Harap-Canfield, svp at VaynerMedia, in a statement.

Roberts felt like they were already up to speed on the account after Duracell made themselves extremely available throughout the pitch. That allowed the agency to build a working relationship quicker than normal with a new client.

“It was a more iterative process where they’re providing feedback, we’re making adjustments, and so we started to get a sense of how we would work together,” Roberts said. “When we jumped on the holiday brief, it felt like business as usual already.”

Running the pitch in-house

Velutini has advice for marketers for how to run an effective agency review in-house:

1. Own the pitch (it’s too important to delegate)
2. Treat it with the priority it deserves
3. Make sure the decision making process is clear, both internally and externally
4. Involve your internal business stakeholders (e.g., CEO, President) early in the process
5. Create a clear brief and articulation of your brand ambition
6. Establish a clear scorecard on how you will make the decision internally
7. Give fast and clear feedback to everyone (including agencies not selected! That’s the minimum they deserve)
8. Be nice. Many agencies participate in this process and pour their hearts into the work. Treat them with care and the respect they deserve!

Moving on from Wieden+Kennedy

Wieden+Kennedy won the business back in 2016, taking over for Anomaly at the time. Despite the split, Velutini and W+K global CEO Neal Arthur expressed the relationship between the brand and agency remains strong.

“It’s been an incredible few years for the brand, thanks in no small part to Wieden+Kennedy and the work we did together since 2016,” Velutini reflected on his time with the shop, adding that W+K holds an important role in the brand’s story and leaves the partnership with what he described as “lifelong friends.”

“Ramon is someone I’m proud to call a friend, not just a client,” Arthur told Adweek. “We’ve had a lot of wins as a team, and we wish the whole crew at Duracell the best.”