Saatchi to work with Tories as profits dip 27pc
The Saatchi brothers will renew their long-standing relationship with the Conservative party in the run up to the general election.
Their advertising agency, M&C Saatchi, has signed a new contract to help kick the Tories out of their polling rut, decades after launching their iconic “Labour isn’t working” campaign.
The announcement came as the agency revealed a 27 per cent drop in pre-tax profit on flat sales last year. It said the start of 2010 has been encouraging as clients tentatively returned to the market.
Chief executive David Kershaw said: “We’re pleased that we managed to maintain pretty stable revenues in an environment of people spending less money and of procurement being pretty aggressive in terms of agency fees”.
He added: “We are not seeing the sort of meltdown that we saw this time last year, but clients are still quite cautious about committing far ahead and because of the nature of the media markets they don’t have to.”
He forecast revenue would increase by about 2.5 per cent in 2010, while Asia would deliver stronger growth, of nine to 10 per cent.
The firm held its total dividend for the year at 3.62p a share.