BREAKING: Liquor retailer BWS has handed its creative duties to DDB Sydney following a hotly contested pitch.

The move means incumbent GHO loses out on the lucrative account.

In June, the Woolworths-owned chain launched a pitch for its creative advertising account and invited agencies to submit expressions of interest for the business, following a rebranding project which it said had almost doubled its store footprint across the country.

Andrew Hicks, general manager of Marketing for the Woolworths Liquor Group, said: “We are incredibly excited about our new partnership with DDB Sydney.

“DDB are an ambitious team who demonstrated passion for the BWS brand, strong strategic thinking and an ability to distil that thinking into a big creative idea.

“At the outset, our goal was to find a full service agency capable of transforming the BWS brand. We have every confidence that a partnership with DDB Sydney will deliver just that,“ said Hicks.

Andrew Little, managing director of DDB Australia, said: “We are delighted to be working with BWS. They are an incredibly talented team and the work they have done to date across 1,200 stores has been superb.