16845: Buckle Up, Detroit.

 

Advertising Age reported on more casualties from General Motors’ decision to partner with White advertising agencies outside of Detroit. Publicis Groupe announced plans to shutter the Leo Burnett Detroit office—which lost Cadillac, Buick, and GMC—and lay off 79 staffers.

 

Add Leo Burnett Detroit to a pileup including Commonwealth, McCann Relationship Marketing, and the White advertising agencies bound to crash and burn in the impending Stellantis review.

 

Despite the setbacks and reductions in force, Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun thinks the White holding company will continue to perform far better than rivals. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics claims Adland regularly adds hundreds of jobs.

 

Meanwhile, news sources report General Motors cut about 1000 employees last week—mostly white-collar workers—adding to the 5000 white-collar workers who took buyout offers from the automaker last April. It’s unlikely the 6000 included any Chief Marketing Officers. But it wouldn’t be surprising to learn Chief Diversity Officers were among the terminated.

 

Analysts tie GM’s problems to failure achieving goals with electric vehicles sales. Hey, maybe President-elect Donald Trump can appoint Elon Musk to assist.

16789: Commonwealth Crashed, Crushed, And Crossed Out.

 

MediaPost reported McCann Worldgroup reset course for its Detroit operations after being sent spinning by the recent General Motors reassignment. Specifically, Commonwealth/McCann is being renamed McCann Detroit, along with reshuffled leaders driving the White advertising agency. MWG Global CEO Daryl Lee declared that with the rejiggering, “we reaffirm our commitment to this important market.”

 

Which means McCann Detroit will probably seek to crash the upcoming Stellantis reviews.

 

MWG Reshuffles Detroit Operations Leadership

 

By Steve McClellan

 

Interpublic’s McCann Worldgroup is reshuffling the leadership at its Detroit operations and giving its dedicated Chevvy agency a new name.   

 

Commonwealth//McCann, the dedicated Chevrolet agency, will be renamed McCann Detroit. The old name is a throwback to the origins of the agency when it was a joint venture with Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Earlier this year the agency laid off a number of its Detroit staff.

 

As part of the reorganization, Grant Theron, who previously served as global CEO of Commonwealth//McCann and led the company’s General Motors business globally, has been appointed global CEO of MRM, MWG’s customer relationship agency.    

 

Theron succeeds Kate MacNevin who will continue as global chair of MRM, in addition to her role as global chief operating officer of McCann Worldgroup.   

 

Taking over Theron’s responsibilities on GM will be Belinda Leworthy, who has been elevated to a dual role of global business lead for GM and president, McCann Worldgroup Detroit. She previously led Commonwealth//McCann’s North America operations.   

 

Theron and Leworthy are both based in Detroit. While McCann has made significant layoffs in the market this year, global CEO Daryl Lee indicated in a statement that with the reorganization, “we reaffirm our commitment to this important market.”

16737: IPG Braking & Breaking Commonwealth/McCann.

 

Advertising Age reported IPG White advertising agency Commonwealth/McCann in Detroit is executing layoffs—up to 56 employees—resulting from the recent General Motors decision to roll with new White advertising agencies based outside of the Midwest region.

 

The shop originally launched in early 2012 as a joint venture between White advertising agencies from different White holding companies—Omnicom’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners and IPG’s McCann. The honeymoon didn’t last long, as GM drove Chevy business from GS&P to Leo Burnett months later, prompted by shifting CMOs at the automaker. The latest GM maneuver, incidentally, was also accelerated by a new CMO.

 

It all just goes to show that White holding companies, White advertising agencies, White car companies, and White CMOs create total wrecks that injure lots of White people. Indeed, GM appears to have an assembly line churning out Mark LaNeve models as crummy as the produced vehicles.

 

In short, it’s common chaos—and the wealth is rarely shared with common workers.

12360: Chevy’s Colorado Car Wreck.

Chevrolet rolled out a new 2015 Colorado truck commercial—created by McCann Commonwealth—that can only be described as a car wreck. After all the high-priced politics, consolidations and firings, Chevrolet manages to produce thoroughly forgettable advertising that could have been hatched by a local dealership’s in-house promotional department. Besides being extraordinarily White, the contrived and clichéd commercial counters its Find New Roads™ tagline; that is, the spot reflects a road well traveled—to mediocrity. Additionally disturbing are the many comments at YouTube praising the commercial and/or linking to Chevrolet dealers. It smacks of the Deutsch LA Twitter fiasco, where the FTC ultimately charged that the agency misled consumers with positive tweets from Deutsch staffers. Yep, it’s yet another road well traveled—to digital dumbness and deception.

11688: LatinWorks Says, “Adios, Chevy.”

Advertising Age reported Chevy moved its Latino business from LatinWorks to McCann’s Casanova Pendrill. Looks like another Omnicom shop was dumped by the auto brand. Spike DDB remains on the Chevy roster, but probably only until Commonwealth identifies some Black ad people to pick up the crumbs.

Chevy Moves Hispanic to McCann’s Casanova from LatinWorks

Shift Represents Further Consolidation at Dedicated Chevy Agency Commonwealth

By Laurel Wentz

General Motors’ Chevrolet is moving all its U.S. Hispanic advertising to Casanova Pendrill, McCann Worldgroup’s Hispanic agency, from Omnicom-backed LatinWorks. The shift is essentially a consolidation with Commonwealth, McCann’s dedicated agency for General Motors’ Chevrolet account.

“Connecting with Hispanic audiences in a meaningful way is critical to Chevrolet,” said Paul Edwards, U.S. VP, Chevrolet Marketing, in a statement confirming the move. “We welcome Casanova Pendrill to the Chevrolet team and we look forward to working with them to build on Chevrolet’s strong product momentum among Hispanic consumers.”

The agencies were told Wednesday morning that the business would move to Casanova. This is the first major move by Mr. Edwards in his new post. Both Hispanic shops had presented proposals; Casanova is believed to have presented a more integrated solution.

“We talked about what we offer as an independent expert in multicultural,” said Sergio Alcocer, LatinWorks’ president and chief creative officer. “It’s difficult when an agency does the global work for a brand to make the case why the Hispanic market in the U.S. needs to stand alone.”

LatinWorks won the Chevy business without a pitch four years ago from Joel Ewanick, GM’s chief marketing officer who had been a LatinWorks client earlier at Hyundai. Mr. Ewanick was dismissed from the company in July 2012. In 2012, Chevrolet slashed LatinWorks’ Hispanic budget drastically as part of the global move to consolidate Chevy at Commonwealth. Chevrolet U.S. marketing chief Chris Perry, who also worked closely with LatinWorks, resigned in mid-December 2013.

Hispanic responsibility for Silverado, which LatinWorks has also worked on, is expected to move to Casanova, too.

Since the review only covered Hispanic, Omnicom’s Spike DDB is likely to retain Chevrolet’s African-American business. The agency could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening.

The transition of the Chevy business to Casanova from LatinWorks will take place over the next 30 days, the car maker said.

Commonwealth has been aggressively building up its offering, shifting Linus Karlsson, who was chief creative officer of global brands at McCann Erickson, to creative chairman of Commonwealth, while Andreas Dahlqvist, who was deputy chief creative officer of global brands, becomes chief creative officer at Commonwealth.

Contributing: Alexandra Bruell

11050: Find New Jobs With Chevy.

Advertising Age reported General Motors has officially fired Goodby Silverstein & Partners and handed all of the Chevy business to McCann. The two agencies had been sharing the account as partners of a coalition called Commonwealth for about a year. In a bizarre move, roughly 200 GS&P employees have been offered positions with McCann at their current employment agreements. Guess Chevy is taking its new tagline—Find New Roads—literally. Then again, General Motors would look pretty bad putting so many bodies out of work. The automaker is ultimately responsible for the awful business decision to pair shops from rival networks. Gee, maybe Kelly Polc and Kelly Polcyn will get rehired too.

11044: Commonwealth Commentary.

Advertising Age published two articles speculating on the inevitable destruction of Commonwealth. More interesting than the Ad Age commentary are two comments that appeared with the first article (the comments were ultimately removed from the site):

Kelly Polc | Birmingham, Mi | Mar 09, 2013 | 8:06 PM

I was a Jr Account Exec who fell victim to the recent layoffs at CW. I must say, working so closely with all the aforementioned people, it’s odd how TRUTH gets twisted....then again, from what I’ve seen in two short years, there is no TRUTH in advertising. This comment isn’t meant to be malicious or vindictive as I was let go do to cut backs a month ago, but I must speak TRUTH. I had the distinct pleasure of working with all kinds of talented people, including Jeff Goodby, Linus Karlsson, Andreas Dahlqvist, Larry Frey and Ralph Watson. As a Jr Account exec, I saw the real engine to all things functional. It was Goodby’s people for sure. Linus and Andreas seemed to come in one day and pretty much push their weight around, no pun intended, but I remember vividly sitting in a meeting when Larry Frey and Ralph Watson presented all the new work for their campaign, Find New Roads. That was a 100% effort on behalf of the Goodby team. From my young, and maybe not as experienced POV, it was Goodby creative that was driving big ideas, but, due to some politics, per usual in this bizarre business, the McCann folks came in under cover as “Commonwealth” and tried to take over... I think GM would be in for shock at how McCann has no clue. Besides a couple of expensive TV ads, the rest is all Goodby.... Make no mistake, all the creative you see that is out, is Jeff Goodby approved creative, I think the McCann team executed about 20% of it, but 80% of all media from that relationship is ALL GSP. GM would find themselves in a dire place if they gave that whole piece of the business to McCann. This is a fact. I know, because part of my job was to organize who was working on what. And, as I said, 90% of all the new work is Goodby. This would go down as the biggest scam in ad history. And, reading about Mahoney from VW coming in, he would see right through the two cultures, one fresh thinking and relevant, the other, very Mad Men. Yes, McCann loves to spend GM money...as you get the feeling that the McCann folks felt like money was always going to solve everything. McCann has nice people, but comparing the two cultures, it’s a clear Goodby is smaller, smarter, less expensive and way less aggressive and corporate, but, now to knock the Goodby problem, some Goodby leaders seemed to let the bs and bureaucracy just happen, almost like they were paid to give it all away. But, Find New roads and the general creative solutions are all GSP. Be smart with your money GM, it wasn’t that long ago that bad decisions forced the tax payers to make up for irrational decisions. I write this as an unemployed person, who just wants to see GM relevant again.

::

Kelly Polcyn | Detroit, MI | Mar 10, 2013 | 1:15 PM

This is the real Kelly Polcyn and the above post was not written by myself nor does it represent my opinions and thoughts about Goodby, Commonwealth, McCann or General Motors. Who ever used my likeness to post the above comment, remove immediately. I am also seeking legal advice regarding this post.

Wow. When did Ad Age become AgencySpy? Kelly Polc is clearly a supporter of Goodby Silverstein & Partners—while Kelly Polcyn appears to be a victim of an anonymous troll. Regardless, the comments constitute the most creative writing to be associated with Commonwealth to date.