HYDRO-QUEBEC HAS TWO SHORT LISTS
By Adnews Staff
Hydro-Québec has five agencies vying for the creative portion of its ad account, and three battling it out for the media business. All are based in Montreal. Those on the creative short list are: Cossette Communication-Marketing, Marketel, Publicité Martin, BOS and PNMB/Publitel. The media agencies in contention are Paul Martel, Cossette's media arm Median and incumbent Stratégem. The total annual budget for the account is $6 million. A decision is expected in mid-January. The provincially-owned utility has used BCP of Montreal for four years. Normally it has a review every three years, but Hydro kept BCP on for an extra year because the company was going through some organizational changes, commercial communications director Paul Paré told Adnews this week. Hydro is not demanding speculative creative presentations. It just asked for agency qualifications, examples of previous work and strategic recommendations. Ten agencies showed interest in the creative business and six originally applied for the media account.