General Motors Announces Ad Agency Change

Anthony Fontanelle
June 28, 2007

The Detroit-based car making giant General Motors was once known for its dedication to stick with a single ad agency. Recently though, the company has been changing ad agencies at short intervals. The company announced that they will be taking in the services of a new ad agency. This marks the second time in five months and the third time in a year that the company has changed ad agencies.

General Motors announced that they will be giving the national creative assignments for their Buick and GMC brands to the agency handling the Pontiac ad campaigns. The said move will be effective by the first of October. The sudden move taken by General Motors in the changing of ad agency came as a surprise since no formal reviews have been made.

According to General Motors, the step to give the creative assignments for the Buick and GMC brands to the agency handling Pontiac is a move to further consolidate the three brands into a single division. This came after General Motors announced that they have grouped Buick, Pontiac, and GMC into a single division.

The grouping of the three brands started last month when General Motors announced a single general manager for the three brands. Jim Bunnell was given the task of being the general manager of the three General Motors brands. Prior to this move, General Motors has a general manager for Buick and a general manager for Pontiac-GMC. The three brands are now known collectively as the Buick-Pontiac-GMC channel.

“Although we have made a lot of progress to date in aligning these three brands in a single channel, we still have work to do,” said Bunnell in an interview. Apparently, having the same agency working on the ad campaigns of the three brands is one of the things that General Motors has been working on. “It’s time to move to the next level,” added Bunnell. “And we believe that having one dedicated agency will help us get there effectively and efficiently.”

Pontiac’s ad agency which will soon be handling Buick and GMC is Leo Burnett - a part of the Publicis Groupe. Buick’s creative assignments are currently being handled by McCann Erickson Worldwide - a part of the McCann Worldgroup unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies. According to TNS Media Intelligence, Buick spent $122 million last year in its ad campaign with McCann.

Meanwhile, the GMC creative assignment is currently being handled by Lowe Worldwide which is based in New York. Lowe is part of Interpublic as well. TNS reported that GMC spent about $261.5 million last year in its ad campaign. Burnett will be handling the creative assignments for the three brands from its Troy, Michigan office. Burnett will also have the backing of its Chicago headquarters and other Publicis agencies.

Before these ad agency changes, General Motors is known for its loyalty to one agency. For example, the Chevrolet division has been working with Campbell-Ewald since 1914. Campbell-Ewald is also part of Interpublic.

Aside from the changes made with the Buick and GMC assignments, General Motors also changed ad agencies for the Saturn brand. The ad campaigns for the brand selling the Saturn ECM calibration kit that comes with Saturn vehicles is now being handled by Deutsche, also a part of Interpublic.

Source:  Amazines.com