Lloyds Banking Group, the UK’s largest retail bank, has begun a review of its media buying and planning arrangements.
The statutory three-year review, which has been confirmed by the bank, includes media for Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows and MBNA. It covers all “traditional and digital” media channels.
The media spend is estimated to be north of £80m, making it one of the largest financial services accounts in the UK.
Lloyds Banking Group spent a total of £187m on advertising and promotion in 2020, up by 10% on the £170m cost of advertising and promotion in 2019, according to the annual report.
MediaCom is understood to be defending the business.
Lloyds Banking Group and MediaCom declined to comment.
MediaCom has served as Lloyds Banking Group’s sole media agency since 2018, when the bank retired Greenhouse GroupM – a bespoke cross-agency account team – in favour of a more traditional agency-client relationship.
In that pitch, MediaCom beat stablemate Mindshare to the business.
Group M agencies have served Lloyds Banking Group since 2009, when MEC (now Wavemaker) was appointed.
Greenhouse was created by WPP in 2015 when Group M last retained the business. It recruited former MullenLowe London chief Richard Warren, who subsequently joined Lloyds as its marketing and communications chief in 2018.
Earlier this year, ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 reported how Lloyds Banking Group had set up an in-house creative agency to make “considerable” savings, move faster and create “more empathetic” customer communications.
The agency, which is called Beehive, works alongside LBG’s existing roster of agencies, which includes Adam & Eve/DDB and New Commercial Arts.
Catherine Kehoe is chief customer officer of Lloyds Banking Group, with oversight of all of its brand and marketing activities.
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