Le Meridien parts company with TBWA on global account

NEW YORK – International hotel chain Le Meridien has parted company with TBWA\Worldwide and is set to look for a new agency to handle its global advertising account.

Le Meridien, which is part of the Starwood Hotel group, has worked with TBWA since 1999 when what was TBWA GGT Simons Palmer was appointed to handle a £5m global marketing campaign.

Since then, TBWA\London has created a series of work that has run internationally. Most recently it created a series of quirky television commercials to support its "Stay and save" campaign.

The campaign was part of its efforts to build awareness of the 135-strong Le Meridien brand.

However, following Le Meridien's sale last year to Starwood, which also owns the Sheraton and W Hotel brands, a new marketing chief has been appointed in FMCG marketer Eva Ziegler, who has been re-evaluating the brand with a new team.

Playing to its strengths as a European brand, Ziegler wants to promote the Le Meridien chain as one that appeals to the creative type of hotel guests.

Although she said a search had not begun for a new agency, she suggested that the type of agency was likely to be a smaller creative hotshop rather than more traditional agency.

There was no indication how large the spend could be, but Javier Benito, Starwood Hotel chief marketing officer, said at the Starwood Media summit in New York that advertising spend was something that he was looking at.

"There has been no consistent spend on advertising [in the hotel industry] and that is something that we are going to change."

However, he would not be drawn on the size of the budget nor by how much it might be increased.

"We are still assessing everything for the Le Meridien -- we [Starwood] only bought the brand last year," Benito said.

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