Pre-Boomer Musings

There was a time, not long ago, when nothing was more American than General Motor’s leading brand, Chevrolet.  The Chevy advertising campaign from the ‘70s capitalized on this with the line, “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet.”  Can you imagine an ad agency from another country trying to capture the collective emotions of America the way the Detroit creative team did with this simple, yet powerful, association of icons?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

When the top brass at GM fired Campbell-Ewald, the Chevy ad agency since 1919, it marked the end of one of America’s longest client-agency relationships.  Among some of the memorable ad campaigns developed by C-E were Dinah Shore singing “See the USA in Your Chevrolet,” and “The Heartbeat of America,” as well as “Like a Rock” and an “American Revolution.”  It’s sad to see almost 90 years of hard work go down the drain and the business go to another shop in hopes of saving what was once a proud brand, especially since the new agency is French, located in Paris.

What makes this move worse is that GM now stands for “Government Motors.”  The US government controls more than 50 % of the auto makers stock; so why would Washington want to line the pockets of a foreign agency rather than allow an American agency the opportunity to help reposition the Chevy brand?  Because of the recession, which resulted in an ad spending slow down, there are lots of Madison Avenue professionals out of work.  This move does not make sense financially or morally.

Of course the ad agency situation is only part of the problem.  Not long ago, the new CEO of GM appeared in television commercials stating that the company has paid back its bailout, “in full and ahead of schedule.”  But the math tells another story.  GM got $50 billion in TARP monies.  Of this, about $7 billion was a low-interest loan and $13 billion was deposited in an escrow account.  It appears as if the company took the escrow money and paid off the loan. 

Pre-boomers remember the line “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”  Well, this line may become popular again if GM took the money from one pocket and put it in the other.  The government needs to look into the accounting that’s going on with “our money” and be sure the corporation’s top guy is not presenting misinformation to the American public.

Just before pulling the plug on the Chevy account, GM hired a London based agency to revitalize the Cadillac brand.  It’s interesting to note that a major stock holder in the British company is the same French firm that picked up Chevy and also owns the Chicago based agency responsible for Buick’s advertising.  Makes one wonder what’s really going on behind the scenes in the Detroit-Washington-Paris axis.

Before GM and the French ad agency start counting the profits, they must remember that Washington also bailed out another US auto maker, Chrysler.  The recovery has not been positive with this company.  Could it be because the current administration cut Chrysler’s ad budget in half?

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