Yili called a TV buying pitch that lasted from December 2011 until the end of February. Agencies involved reported that it was not a fixed annual pitch, but that Yili wants to change its TV buying approach to optimise media investment in 2012.
In previous years, Yili’s TV media business was shared between Mindshare and UM, while UM also handled all of the brand's print media.
Yili's monitored adspend for local TV media is US$666 million (RMB4.2 billion). OMD also regained Yili's print media buying account which it handled in 2000.
However, as reported in on 24 February, Mindshare retained Yili's media account for the fourth year, and got a bigger share of the business. For the CCTV TV nationwide media business, Mindshare China will be in charge of media planning, while Yili will handle the media buying in-house.
Mindshare China has retained the satellite TV media account, and will be responsible for the media planning for first-tier regional satallite TV channels, including the popular channels like Hunan Satellite, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, while Yili will handle the media buying.
The agency will also handle all the media planning and buying for second-tier provincial satellite TV channels.
Meanwhile, Carat has gained Yili's radio media account, which OMD China handled in 2011.
In April, Yili has appointed Chinese celebrities Angelababy and Taiwanese actor Show (罗志祥) as brand ambassador for its ice-cream product.
Reported in November 2011, Euro RSCG has been rebuilding its relationship with Yili, after losing all accounts in 2009, the agency's Beijing and Shanghai offices have the creative AOR for six Yili dairy products.
According to local China media reports, Yili announced its performance results for 2011, stating the total operating revenue of US$6 billion (RMB37 billion) during the reporting period, a year-on-year increase of 26.25 per cent.
The company attributed the revenue growth mainly to the changes of its sales structure and the average prices of liquid milk, ice cream, milk powder and other dairy products.
