MindShare won the account following a hotly contested competition and will take over the business on January 1 2003. The business could be worth as much as $18m (£11.6m) in revenues for WPP, according to one analyst, although there has been no confirmation of this.
WPP shares rose 6.52% by midday, up 26.2p to 453.2p. When news first emerged this morning, its shares were already up in early trading by 4.5% to 445.2p, having recently fallen as low as 401p in recent weeks.
The Gillette win is a major coup for the WPP Group and its lead media-buying network MindShare.
While not unheard of, it is unusual for non-roster agencies to defeat all the incumbents in a review. MindShare previously held none of the shaving giant's £400m global media buying account.
MindShare won the business after a pitch against Gillette's two incumbent agencies. They were Omnicom Group's OMD, which handled the bulk of the business overseeing the UK, Europe and North America, and the Interpublic Group of Companies-owned Universal McCann, which handled the business in Latin America and Asia Pacific.
Creative for Gillette brands, which is handled by several agencies around the world, was not part of the review and is not affected. In Japan, media buying and planning for Gillette's Braun brand will continue to be handled by Dentsu.
Ed Shirley, senior vice-president at Gillette, said: "We were fortunate to have three strong contenders for our global media business. With the selection of MindShare, we believe we have the best combination of media capabilities and global coverage to help drive our future growth."
The non-roster MindShare was invited on to the pitch list because fellow WPP agency Ogilvy & Mather had previously worked for the Gillette-owned Duracell.
Gillette currently spends £10m annually through OMD in the UK, where the agency has worked on the account since 1990.
The win is a major boost to the group run by chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell who has been pesimistic about hopes of a recovery saying that the industry might have to wait until 2004 for economic conditions to significantly strengthen.
"I think it will be a slow and steady climb out rather than I think 2002 will be better than 2001. Then 2003 will be stronger than that, but I think you have to wait until 2004 for conditions to really strengthen. No doubt George Bush will want to go to the country with a strong economy and then you've got the Athens Olympic Games," he said.
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