Nationwide hires Essence as media agency, WPP creating 'Team Nationwide'

Nationwide has named GroupM’s Essence as its media agency of record. WPP, Essence's parent company, created “Team Nationwide,” an integrated agency team including Essence and Ogilvy, to bring the insurer’s media, tech and creative work under one umbrella. Ogilvy has worked on Nationwide's creative since 2016.

IPG’s Universal McCann previously held the media account. It is not clear if the agency participated in the pitch.

“We couldn’t be prouder of our decade-long partnership, and the growth and results we worked together to deliver with Nationwide,” UM said in a statement. “We look forward to supporting Nationwide’s future success in our continued partnership across SEO and paid search.”

Although Essence pitched Nationwide alone, it will merge with MediaCom in 2023 to form EssenceMediacom and the agencies will work on the account together. 

Ogilvy and Essence are currently figuring out how the integrated team will work and “looking at it first as what are the skill sets,” Natarajan said. “What are the disciplines we need to put an integrated team together to drive the best work and the best outputs for Nationwide? And then we are going through that role by role and identifying the best talent from between the two networks to kind of formulate that team.”

The current team has already begun creating Nationwide-specific email addresses and dedicated social channels and workspaces for those involved. "It will be a sizeable team,” Natarajan said.

Nationwide spent $165.9 million on advertising in 2021, according to its annual regulatory filing, down from $185 million in 2020. The first work from Team Nationwide is set to launch in the fourth quarter of this year.