Captain Birds Eye jumps aboard HHCL & Partners.(ad agency wins account from Lowe Lintas)(Brief Article)

Lowe Lintas no longer has its place on the Birds Eye roster.

After more than 30 years of handling the Captain Birds Eye fish fingers account, Lowe Lintas has been stripped of the business, and there are no prizes for guessing who was waiting in the wings to snap up the work--HHCL & Partners (Campaign, 28 September).

HHCL has been nibbling away at Lowe's grip on the Birds Eye Wall's roster for some time. HHCL first picked up the ready meals business in 1998 after working for six months on a consultancy basis. A year ago, the shift in favour was underlined when Unilever handed Lowe's 3 million [pounds sterling] Birds Eye potato account to HHCL without a pitch.

There is no secret that the latest HHCL success was triggered by a creative bust-up between Lowe and Birds Eye.

Birds Eye's business director, Chris Pomfret, admits: "We've proven in the four years that we have worked with HHCL that we work very well together. They seem to understand us and we understand them. We have been very happy with their work. In this case there was a difference of opinion [with Lowe] about the creative direction we wanted to go in. We decided that it would be better to go with HHCL where there wasn't that difference of opinion. Lowe are aware of this."

"The Captain is without question one of the great advertising properties that exists in the UK," Pomfret adds. "We are very proud of him and we want to see him continue to be the spokesperson."

So isn't it a bit harsh to dump Lowe Lintas -- Ammirati Puris Lintas held the account before the Lowe merger in 1999 -- after 30 years of service, and when it had a big part in building that "great advertising property"?