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Carling, the UK’s best-selling lager brand, is ending a 16-year

relationship with WCRS, after the agency secretly pitched for a

rival.

WCRS, which created the classic line ’I bet he drinks Carling Black

Label’, had been included on the pitch list for Holsten Pils’ pounds 5m

account.

The brewer only found out its agency was pitching for the business after

a front-page story in Marketing last week.

This week a joint statement from both Bass and WCRS said they were

parting company. It said both sides ’had increasingly come to feel it

was time for a change’.

Mark Hunter, Bass Brewers’ marketing director, said the decision could

be ’a catalyst for all parties involved’. Stephen Woodford, chief

executive of WCRS, said: ’We’ll always be very proud that we created

some of Britain’s best-loved advertising for Bass, but we both feel that

now is the time to move on to pastures new.’

WCRS produced well-known campaigns from the ’I bet he drinks Carling

Black label’, to the recent ads featuring Ron Atkinson and the beginning

of football.

Bass plans to appoint a new agency and said that there would be a short

transitional period for a smooth handover.

The relationship between Bass-owned Carling and WCRS had recently been

overshadowed by uncertainty, after the agency lost both the Bass-owned

Worthingtons and Caffrey’s brand accounts.

Rumours that Bass would sell its brewing interests also raised doubts

about the future of the WCRS relationship.

Carling remains the UK’s best-selling lager brand, with a 24% share of

draught sales.

Last year, Carling’s ad budget was pounds 7.9m. Carling’s spend for the

first quarter of this year was pounds 832,000 (AC Nielsen MMS).

Bass is this week expected to report on sale plans for its pounds 2bn

brewing arm.