Tennis Australia has moved its media account to PHD Australia, following a competitive pitch beginning in May.
The account has landed in PHD’s Melbourne office, home of the Australian Open, as Mumbrella understands it is moving across from Publicis Groupe’s Zenith.
The appointment is effective immediately and will see the Omnicom Media Group agency PHD work with Tennis Australia to grow events such as the Australian Open and the ATP Cup, in addition to getting more people involved in the sport.
2020 Australian Open champion, Sofia Kenin
General manager of PHD’s Melbourne office, Simon Lawson, said: “We felt an immediate connection with the team at Tennis Australia and worked very hard during the process to convince them that PHD was their ideal next partner to help them increase the sophistication with which they make their media investments to grow the game. I’m so pleased our efforts were successful.”
Tennis Australia chief insights and marketing officer, Josie Brown also said: “We went to market to tender our media agency provider and conducted an appropriately thorough process for such a key decision for our business. In the end, PHD best demonstrated they had heard and understood our business requirements for the AO.”
Brown added that a particular attraction in the tendering process was PHD’s “proposed range of tools and technology solutions” to help get Tennis Australia to market faster and act with great agility on data trends.
PHD said that the Melbourne officer already has “a special affinity with tennis”, having assisted ANZ Bank activate its sponsorship of the Australian Open for the past nine years, as well as working with CUB brand Peroni as the official beer partner of the Australian Open.
In 2019, Tennis Australia moved its creative account to Clemenger BBDO Melbourne.
Zenith was contacted for comment regarding the move, however had no response at the time of publishing.
Last month, Omincom Media Group retained the PepsiCo Australia media account following a pitch process. The account, which was previously held by PHD will now be handled by custom built agency Trio, led by PHD managing director Stuart Bailey.
Article originally published on Mumbrella
