Starcom has won the global media planning and buying business for Etihad Airways, Alitalia, airberlin and Jet Airways, following a pitch involving a number of agency networks including incumbent MediaCom.

The pitch was announced in April by Etihad Airways Partner (EAP), involved a number of undisclosed agencies and marked a consolidation of EAP’s media planning and buying into a single media agency.

Etihad said that Starcom’s buying team, resources, planning tools and “buying clout’ gave the agency the edge. Starcom will work with EAP in key hubs in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Italy and India, while the account will be co-ordinated centrally from Starcom’s London base.

The tender process is understood to have involved some of the incumbents that worked across Etihad Airways partner airlines – OMD for airberlin, Mindshare for Alitalia and Dentsu Aegis Network for Jet Airways.

Starcom will have proven during the tender process how it can provide economies of scale across the multiple airlines, as well as giving “centralised strategic advice and planning to meet the unique commercial needs of the airline grouping”.

Shane O’Hare, Etihad Airways’ senior vice-president of marketing, said: “The depth of the relationships within the EAP allows us to go even further with our joint media strategy alignment, and will allow Starcom to maximise returns on our collective investment and to ensure that each unique brand experience is brought to life with optimum exposure on a global scale.”

Matt Blackborn, Starcom MediaVest Group’s president of investment and diversification, added: “We are the foremost innovators in the precision media space and very much welcome this exciting challenge of working with the Etihad Airways Partner airlines across all their communications platforms.

“This is a unique client brief and relationship as it brings together multiple brands from the same industry and is ground-breaking in the agency world.”