Capital One is the fastest-growing credit card in the UK, according to research by MORI. However, its ad business came up for grabs when incumbent D'Arcy was closed following the purchase of its parent BCOM3 by Publicis in October 2002.
McCann's New York and London offices will collaborate on the business across both markets. A Capital One spokesman said that neither of McCann's offices has been given overall charge of the account and that each would be judged on the basis of their creative ideas.
The pitch was handled by Capital One's brand teams in the US and the UK. Responsibility for marketing in the UK resides with vice-president of European brand Frazer Smith, who joined from NatWest in May 2001.
McCann beat Abbott Mead Vickers/BBDO in London, Kaplan Thaler in New York and Publicis in the UK, Scotland's Faulds and Element 79 in the US.
Publicis Groupe-owned Kaplan Thaler, which briefly took on the account after the closure of D'Arcy, has just created a TV campaign called 'Troll', which hit the UK's TV screens on Monday. The ads follow the same theme as last year's Capital One's TV advertising, which featured yetis, gladiators, Vikings and giant snowballs, using the slogan 'What's in your wallet?'
The launch of that campaign (Marketing, May 9, 2002) marked the first time the Capital One brand had used TV in the UK since it entered the market in 1996. The ads conveyed the company's credit cards as hassle-free.
Capital One, which has nearly 48 million customers worldwide, ranks in the top ten credit cards globally. At the start of 2001 it had about one million customers in the UK, but that has grown to more than 2.5 million.
Media and direct marketing have been unaffected by the review and will remain with MediaVest and BC-S respectively. D'Arcy won the business in December 2001 and was forced to resign its Alliance & Leicester account.
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