By Bernie Woodall
DETROIT, July 2 (Reuters) - For the second time since bringing in a new U.S. marketing chief in May, General Motors Co has made a major shift in its advertising strategy.
GM said on Friday it dumped the ad agency for its luxury brand Cadillac and hired Fallon of Minneapolis. The previous ad agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, had handled the account for only six months.
Two weeks after he took his chief marketing post in early May, Joel Ewanick hired a new agency for GM's biggest-selling Chevrolet brand.
'Fallon's deep, 17-year experience with other luxury automotive brands like Porsche and BMW makes them a perfect fit for our flagship brand,' Ewanick said in a GM news release.
Cadillac with Fallon as its new creative agency will seek to push new luxury models in a sluggish U.S. auto sales environment that is showing signs of weakening its already-slow pace.
In mid-May, Ewanick led a switch of Chevrolet's ad agency to Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, taking the place of an agency on the job for only a month.
Campbell-Ewald lost the Chevy account in April after 91 years. It was the creator of many memorable Chevrolet ads at a time when GM was dominant in the U.S. market. It came up with the 'Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet' ads of the 1970s.
Fallon is a division of Fallon Worldwide, a part of Publicis Group SA.
Ewanick was given free rein to shake up GM's marketing which had been seen as stale.
He is viewed as a key driver in the sales success of Hyundai in the United States, where its 2009 sales rose 8 percent while industrywide sales dropped 21 percent.
Cadillac, in the first half of 2010, made up 6 percent of GM's sales of its four main U.S. brands including Buick and GMC as well as Chevrolet. Cadillac's sales are up 33 percent.
Chevrolet's sales so far in 2010 have accounted for 73 percent of GM's main brand sales.
Those four main brands of GM made up 99 percent of overall GM sales in the first half of 2010. Those sales do not include Saturn, Pontiac and Hummer, brands GM is shedding.
GM's sales through June are up 14 percent from the same period in 2009, and its share of the U.S. new vehicle market is 19.6 percent, according to Autodata.
GM plans to file a prospectus for its initial public offering in mid-August, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday. There has not been a date set for the IPO of publicly traded shares.
GM is also in talks with four U.S.-based banks for a $5 billion line of credit.
(Reporting by Bernie Woodall, editing by Matthew Lewis) Keywords: GM/CADILLAC (bernie.woodall@thomsonreuters.com; + 1 313-967-1901) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
DETROIT, July 2 (Reuters) - For the second time since bringing in a new U.S. marketing chief in May, General Motors Co has made a major shift in its advertising strategy.
GM said on Friday it dumped the ad agency for its luxury brand Cadillac and hired Fallon of Minneapolis. The previous ad agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, had handled the account for only six months.
Two weeks after he took his chief marketing post in early May, Joel Ewanick hired a new agency for GM's biggest-selling Chevrolet brand.
'Fallon's deep, 17-year experience with other luxury automotive brands like Porsche and BMW makes them a perfect fit for our flagship brand,' Ewanick said in a GM news release.
Cadillac with Fallon as its new creative agency will seek to push new luxury models in a sluggish U.S. auto sales environment that is showing signs of weakening its already-slow pace.
In mid-May, Ewanick led a switch of Chevrolet's ad agency to Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, taking the place of an agency on the job for only a month.
Campbell-Ewald lost the Chevy account in April after 91 years. It was the creator of many memorable Chevrolet ads at a time when GM was dominant in the U.S. market. It came up with the 'Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet' ads of the 1970s.
Fallon is a division of Fallon Worldwide, a part of Publicis Group SA.
Ewanick was given free rein to shake up GM's marketing which had been seen as stale.
He is viewed as a key driver in the sales success of Hyundai in the United States, where its 2009 sales rose 8 percent while industrywide sales dropped 21 percent.
Cadillac, in the first half of 2010, made up 6 percent of GM's sales of its four main U.S. brands including Buick and GMC as well as Chevrolet. Cadillac's sales are up 33 percent.
Chevrolet's sales so far in 2010 have accounted for 73 percent of GM's main brand sales.
Those four main brands of GM made up 99 percent of overall GM sales in the first half of 2010. Those sales do not include Saturn, Pontiac and Hummer, brands GM is shedding.
GM's sales through June are up 14 percent from the same period in 2009, and its share of the U.S. new vehicle market is 19.6 percent, according to Autodata.
GM plans to file a prospectus for its initial public offering in mid-August, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday. There has not been a date set for the IPO of publicly traded shares.
GM is also in talks with four U.S.-based banks for a $5 billion line of credit.
(Reporting by Bernie Woodall, editing by Matthew Lewis) Keywords: GM/CADILLAC (bernie.woodall@thomsonreuters.com; + 1 313-967-1901) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.