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Fonterra is taking remedial action to push its brands in the Middle East and Africa in the wake of an embarrassing admission it had failed to promote them for the best part of a decade.
Fonterra's Middle Eastern hub general manager, Amr Farghal, who last month revealed to Arab media that the dairy giant had not bothered to promote its brands there for the past six or seven years, says the company has now appointed creative and media agencies Impact/BBDO and OMD to market the Mainland, Chesdale, Anlene and Anchor product ranges.
"We are working hard to continue to grow each brand in this region, and it is important to have a creative and strong agency that has a lot of fresh ideas," Farghal said in a statement.
News of the Middle Eastern contracts comes a year after Fonterra Brands made Omnicom Group - the agencies' owner - its sole advertising and media agency internationally.
Fonterra is a major supplier of milk powder to dairy companies in the Middle East and Northern Africa, where its business is worth $1.2 billion out of its global turnover of $13.9 billion.
But Farghal has said that unless Fonterra diversifies its portfolio and focuses on building brands and value-added ingredients in the region, it would be at the mercy of commodity price fluctuations.
The move to beef up its brand presence in the Middle East and Africa comes as soaring commodity prices put increasing pressure on its global brands business.
Although Anlene - a milk product enriched with calcium - has long been available in Asia, Fonterra launched the product in milk powder form in the Middle East only in June.
The company is now working on ways to adapt the product for the Middle Eastern market, the company said.
Farghal also said a team of in-house marketers was working on the "rejuvenation of Anchor".
Fonterra's fastest growing markets in the Middle East are the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which account for some 60 per cent of the dairy giant's business in the Gulf region.
It also exports to Jordan, Syria, East Africa, the former Soviet republics as well as Iraq and Iran.
