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GM has chartered its own agency based in Detroit. Expect fewer made-in-Canada ads as a result
In many ways it is a question of both chemistry and alchemy: Can two separate and distinct organizations successfully come together to make creative gold out of Detroit steel?
As part of his stated intention to simplify GM’s agency partnerships and drive out some $2 billion in marketing costs over the next five years, GM’s vice-president and chief marketing officer Joel Ewanick came up with a simple solution: combine rivals Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group of Cos. (IPG) to form a new agency charged with global creative duties. Problem solved (see: “Dell and WPP re: Enfatico 2009”).
Detroit-based Commonwealth will employ 280 people and draw senior creative talent from both Omnicom’s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and IPG’s McCann Erickson Worldwide.
While ostensibly the deal means GM will continue its historically long relationship with MacLaren McCann in Canada, the decision is once again sparking debate about the role of Canadian agencies in an increasingly globalized world. Will they eventually be relegated, as one poster at MarketingMag.ca has suggested, to simply changing the dot-com on a piece of out-of-market creative to dot-ca?
At this point, it is still unclear what the impact will be on Chevrolet’s regional agency partners. In Canada, Chevy work has been split between MacLaren and Vision 7’s Cossette, which oversaw French-language duties.
Both Cossette and MacLaren turned down interview requests, but Tom Henderson, manager of cross-brand communications and media relations for GM in Detroit, says Commonwealth is now the “global agency for Chevrolet, including Quebec.” Cossette, he added, will continue to work on GM’s dealer network (including Chevy), Cadillac, Buick and Goodwrench businesses in the province.
Outlining his vision for Commonwealth during a conference call, McCann Worldgroup chair and CEO Nick Brien seemed to suggest a reduced role for regional agency partners. Commonwealth, he said, will employ a “hub and spoke” model, in which regional spokes like Canada will charged with providing insights and ideas to the Detroit hub.
“[Canada] is not going to be a creative development hub, but it’s certainly going to be an… important resource to have thinking and insights and particulars of the Canadian market [contributed] to the overall process,” said Brien.
However, one agency executive who asked not to be named, said that the fallout from the decision could be particularly harmful for MacLaren. “I don’t think anybody at MacLaren should be under any illusion they’re going to remain the agency of record for Chevy in Canada,” he said. “They may find a way to have them do some execution and to play some kind of role in the dealer relationships that are necessary in the category.
While calling the creation of Commonwealth a “smart and surprising” move by GM, Clean Sheet founder and creative head Neil McOstrich, whose career has included stops at BBDO, DDB and MacLaren—and whose portfolio includes ads for Chrysler—also suggests it will result in a “tremendous loss of control” for Canadian agencies.
Advertising is either a reflection of a country’s culture or helps create that culture, says McOstrich, but Canadian advertising runs the risk of becoming homogenized if multinational clients continue to adopt a globalized approach.
“I’m getting tired of telling people stories of the good old days when we used to work on these multinational brands and do original work and that would be a reflection of Canadian values,” says McOstrich.
But Ian Mirlin, a 40-year agency veteran who spent time as MacLaren’s CD in the late 2000s and now operates a Toronto operation called Zero Gravity Thinking, says the GM decision doesn’t necessarily mean the end of a partnership with MacLaren.
“[GM] is a seriously large client… working its way back toward strength, and looking at ways of saving money and maximizing their creative firepower, and I think that’s all alright.”
Agency veteran John Farquhar, partner and chief creative officer with Toronto agency Rain 43, and former president and CEO of longtime Ford Motor Company of Canada agency Y&R, says the consolidation of the Chevrolet business is an inevitable byproduct of an increasingly globalized approach to manufacturing and marketing by companies like GM.
These companies, he says, are increasingly looking to “world brand.”
“Once you start globalizing companies and products based on efficiencies, naturally those efficiencies are going to start happening to our business,” he adds. “There’s still a considerable amount of work for people in the individual countries to do, but the question becomes ‘Where is the brain trust for these brands going to be?’”
