Tesco Names Deutsch LA as Ad Agency

LOS ANGELES -- Tesco USA said it has hired Deutsch LA, the West Coast branch of Interpublic Group, to handle advertising and marketing for the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores it will begin opening later this year. "We've been working with them and others," Simon Uwins, Tesco USA's chief marketing officer, told SN yesterday, "but as we put together a marketing team with different kinds of skills, we felt Deutsch LA was on our wave-length." Deutsch, which also has offices in New York, is a multi-disciplinary marketing communications agency that assists clients in driving bottom-line results, according to its website. “We do not subscribe to the notion a communication has to be either branding or retail by nature," the website indicates. "We suggest work should blur both lines and do double duty, communicating both messages simultaneously." Asked when the agency's efforts would become visible, Uwins replied, "Those efforts will become evident to customers when they need the information." He said Tesco does not yet know exactly where its first U.S. store will open. "The whole question of permits makes it difficult at the moment to know where it will be," he told SN. -- Elliot Zwiebach