UPDATE: Singtel moves media account to Havas

Singtel has confirmed appointing Havas Media as its media agency following a pitch.Here is the statement issued to Marketing: "Singtel has appointed Havas Media Singapore as its agency of record, awarding to it media planning and buying duties across Singtel in Singapore. Havas Media has demonstrated its media planning thought-leadership and strength in digital innovation, which is very much in line with Singtel’s vision as a company," said the telco in a statement."We wish to sincerely thank MEC who have been a great partner over the years, with our collaboration resulting in many award-winning campaigns. We wish them every success," it added.In the last round, agencies such as Carat-Vizeum’s Team Connect, MEC, PHD and Havas Media were vying for the account. Singtel called the pitch in December last year, putting incumbent agency MEC on alert.The pitch was managed by R3 and MEC held the account for over five years.Earlier this year, Singtel also newly launched a refreshed brand image, done by creative agency Ogilvy & Mather. This was the biggest brand revamp the telco has gone for in 16 years. It also surfaced a new tagline: “Let’s make everyday better.”, that garnered the brand some flak for poor grammar.Meanwhile, just last month, Singtel terminated the services of social media agency Gushcloud, and its employee who was involved in the marketing campaign that smeared its competitors, Starhub and M1.In a statement released on its Facebook page, Group CEO Singtel, Chua Sock Koong said it worked with a digital agency to promote a youth marketing campaign. “We regret that a Singtel employee who worked on this campaign did not adhere to our professional standards and values. We have since terminated the services of the agency and the employee is no longer with us.”