Steve’s breakdown: Just Eat Takeaway.com, which includes GrubHub, is in a global media review and it seems the door is wide open so get in there and get global!

Caution: There are a lot of brands and people and locations involved with this whole situation. For instance, take a look at who’s list as employees on LinkedIn.

CHICAGO, IL & AMSTERDAM, Netherlands: Just Eat Takeaway.com is to consolidate its media planning and buying requirements around the world in a global agency review.

The two incumbents, IPG Mediabrands’ UM, which handles Just Eat, and Dentsu International, which looks after Takeaway.com, are facing a shootout.

Industry sources said Just Eat Takeaway.com sounded out other agency groups about pitching for the fast-growing online takeaway food-ordering service but it is thought they declined because of the high volume of other major pitches taking place this year – following a hiatus during the worst of the pandemic last year.

The media review follows a creative agency pitch earlier this year, when McCann Worldgroup, a sister business of UM and the incumbent on Just Eat, won the consolidated global creative account in a four-way pitch against Adam & Eve/DDB, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and TBWA\London.

Just Eat Takeaway.com, which was formed by the merger of the two brands last year, has become a major spender on marketing as it battles against global players, such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

Susan O’Brien, vice-president, brand at Just Eat Takeaway.com, said: “Following the combination of Just Eat and Takeaway.com, the business has grown rapidly to become a leading online food-delivery marketplace with operations across 24 countries.

“As such, we are reviewing our media planning and buying requirements to build on the great work done to date by both legacy businesses. Just Eat Takeaway.com is now looking to appoint one global media agency to help us deliver campaigns across all of our operating markets.”

MediaSense is advising on the pitch, after previously running Just Eat’s media review in 2019. UM won that consolidation.

Just Eat Takeaway.com’s marketing expenditure increased by 158% to €369m (£315m) in 2020, compared with €143m in 2019. It hired Snoop Dogg to front its ad campaign during the first lockdown.

The UK was the biggest market, where the brand spent €82m, and Germany was the next biggest, with €71m spend.

The brand has gone on to sponsor some of the biggest televised events this year – notably Euro 2020 and Love Island on ITV.

The company said in its annual report earlier this year: “In 2020, we successfully delivered a comprehensive review and transformation of all legacy Just Eat-branded assets into our impactful Just Eat Takeaway.com orange world.

“Our single brand identity and strategy is efficient because we are able to concentrate all our marketing efforts around a single brand with only a limited organisation.”

Just Eat Takeaway.com also explained the value of top-of-mind awareness (TOMA), which it described as “our key marketing metric”, and brand preference.

“High top-of-mind brand awareness is critical to market leadership which in turn drives long-term profitability and sustainability of our operations,” the company told shareholders.

“As such, improving our top-of-mind brand awareness in each market by continuing our significant marketing efforts is key to our success.”

TOMA reached half of all people in all of Just Eat Takeaway.com’s core markets, in the UK, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands, “for the first time ever” last year, the annual report said.

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