With fear of a double-dip recession on the minds of auto industry executives, drastic measures are undertaken that have sent shock waves through the once steady world of auto advertising. Where size and experience used to guarantee an advertising agency’s future business with automakers, now the exact same automakers are seeking to shake things up as sales numbers continue to flounder when in contrast to those of previous years. Automotive News reports that there’s a $ 600 million media spending turnaround on behalf of 3 major automotive brands, and it is all about swapping ad agencies.
When an industry is in a crisis, auto advertising
Agency consultant David Beals shows us that the ongoing shift in auto advertising has never occurred on such a large scale before, but the shift is indicative of just how bad profit margins are for big automakers. Take GM as an example, who dumped the Chevrolet agency Publicis for Goody Silverstein and Partners and moved its $ 270 million Cadillac auto advertising platform from Publicis-backed Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty to Minnesota-based Fallon. Considering that Chevrolet and Cadillac are the keys to GM’s recovery, the auto advertising changes are very big ones.
At all costs, growth needs to accelerate
Anything that can be done to increase sales has to be done first on the minds of auto executives. And changes are happening fast. Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty didn’t find out that they were fired until the story ran in Advertising Age. BBH’s CEO who is Greg Anderson, said in a statement that his company was “extremely surprised,” to say the least. Doner, a Michigan-based agency, knows just how much change can hurt. Mazda zoom-zoom-zoomed its $ 200 million-plus business elsewhere just last week which is down to $ 152 million in 2009 as a result of recession. Other shifts in auto advertising include Volkswagen (from MDC’s Crispin Porter and Bogusky to Interpublic’s Deutsch) and Mitsubishi (Cimarron Group’s Traffic to Omnicom’s 180 in Los Angeles), as outlined by Automotive News.
Discover more about this topic here:
Automotive News
autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100628/RETAIL03/100629855/1018
Bloomberg Businessweek
businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2010/06/_not_even_two_months.html
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