THE AUTOEXTREMIST

April 28, 2010

Campbell-Ewald is forced to walk the plank as the train wreck called GM marketing continues.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 4/25, 1:30PM) Detroit. It was with mixed feelings that I received the news that Campbell-Ewald - one of my alma maters during my advertising career - was being terminated from handling the Chevrolet account for GM after having had it since 1919. Actually, the agency had lost a significant portion of its Chevrolet business last year to Publicis Groupe SA and the writing was on the wall that they’d soon lose the rest of it, which came to pass last Thursday.

On the one hand, when client-agency relationships go on for a long time it’s inevitable that they can become corrosive and stagnant, and mediocrity can become a perpetual state of being, on both sides. But in C-E’s case – even though they pirouetted into mediocrity on a regular basis in lockstep with their Chevrolet clients - they managed to deliver some of the most famous and memorable ad campaigns in automotive history, including “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet,” “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet,” “The Heartbeat of America,” and “Like A Rock.”

Campbell-Ewald and Chevrolet soared together during GM’s heyday – roughly the late 50s to the late 70s – but the ad agency also delivered the riveting “Heartbeat” and “Rock” campaigns when GM’s fortunes (along with the rest of the domestic automobile industry) were beginning to wane in the face of withering competition from the import automakers.

But as GM plummeted into and through bankruptcy it was clear that changes had to be made. And changing an advertising agency is one of the most obvious things a company can do when its back is to the wall and - and in GM’s case - its strategic resolve amounted to grasping at straws.

GM had become a reoccurring marketing train wreck long before this, however, reeling from one bad decision to the next in a desperate move to turn its severely listing ship around. But it was only in the last three years or so that they had the products to deliver on the marketing promises. And of course by then, it was too late.

Brands and ad agencies alike were jettisoned during GM’s long, slow march through bankruptcy, and now it’s Campbell-Ewald’s turn to walk the plank. Not that C-E wasn’t culpable in all of this, because they most definitely were. Saddled with old-school management that made careers out of going along to get along and who often couldn’t be bothered to get off their asses or get out of their own way – unless it was to collect their fat paychecks, of course – C-E was an ad agency in desperate need of a top-down house cleaning.

But it would never come to pass because C-E was part of the Interpublic Group, one of the most, no, make that the most flat-out incompetent advertising holding company in the world, led by a rumbling, bumbling, stumbling band of so-called “executives” in New York whose only claim to fame was their relentless, serial incompetence, their stupefying bonuses and their steadfast refusal to deal with reality at any time or on any level. IPG management’s astounding lack of vision and unrivaled inability to read the tea leaves of where this business was going combined with a shocking level of tone-deafness that prevented them from hearing anything but the dulcet tones of their own sycophantic, back-slapping cronyism - which was in full song on a daily basis – prevented them from making the necessary sweeping changes needed to C-E’s upper management.

And thus the end for C-E and Chevrolet.

The sad thing is that it’s another body blow to the local ad community - which was on life support as it is – and a lot of good and talented people are going to be out of work by the end of the year.

But so it goes in the ad biz circa 2010: The bumbling fools at the top get paid and never get burned, while the people who actually do the day-in, day-out heavy lifting and make the agency run get screwed royally.

But the C-E/Chevrolet breakup is only part of this week’s story, because after all is said and done, what’s GM’s excuse? This is a company that has reveled in its marketing incompetence for going on three decades now, careening from old-line bureaucratic intransigence, through P&G brand management mumbo jumbo, to an unprecedented new level of abject futility anchored by recycled hacks who should have been fired years ago.

Despite the recent GM PR offensive touting “Big Ed” Whitacre’s easy-going charm and “I’m just a down-to-earth man of the people” hype, the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t have a clue about marketing. Not even a whiff of a clue, in fact. (Or, he’s keeping a lid on his expertise for some future voila! moment that I’m unaware of.) And the sad thing is that he has no one to turn to down at The Tubes who has a clue either.

GM may be really good at jettisoning their advertising agencies – after all, they’re expert practitioners of the time-honored “when business is good it’s because of our great products, and when business is bad it’s because our advertising sucks” advertising adage - but as to what marketing is, what it should and could be, and who should be managing it, the company by all accounts is totally and utterly clueless.

There are things going on right now within the halls of GM that make me shudder. Recycled professional mediocrity – the kind that has repeatedly crippled GM marketing in the past – is not only alive and well but actually thriving within this company again. And I find myself shaking my head in wonder, saying you have got to be kidding me. After all that has transpired – the bailout, the near-death bankruptcy experience, the public humiliation and flogging by Washington politicos, the reluctance by the consumer public to buy into the “tainted” GM brand, etc., etc., etc. – has nothing registered with anyone down at the RenCen by now? Nothing? Really?

Egregious example No. 1? What’s happening right now in Cadillac marketing borders on the incomprehensible. The division’s advertising is being guided by a professional marketing hack who should have been run out of the corporation on a rail years ago. Devoid of vision and misguided by a festering sense of entitlement that is shocking in its scope and lethal in its inevitable horrific consequences, this person – who also wreaked total havoc on Campbell-Ewald on behalf of Chevrolet for years - has no instinct for the business whatsoever yet has been recycled and rotated through various GM marketing jobs with impunity and allowed to run rampant and roughshod over crucial ad decisions that are entirely beyond this person’s scope of expertise. But then again, marketing a local Dairy Queen would be a challenge for this hopelessly over-promoted and over-indulged executive, let alone one of GM’s most crucial divisions. Suffice to say, this executive represents everything wrong with GM marketing, all wrapped-up in one sensationally forgettable career.

The fundamental problem with all of this is that there isn’t a single soul down at the RenCen who knows any different. Not one. Recycled marketing hacks led by overmatched marketing “experts” who couldn’t find a clue if you spotted them the “cl” and the “e” continue to spell disaster for GM. And unless “Big Ed” blows it all up real good - as John Candy memorably used to say - and loads up a bus full of marketing executives and sends them packing to points unknown - never to darken GM’s door again - I seriously question whether GM will ever escape from its two steps forward, five back cadence of rampant mediocrity.

For all of “Big Ed’s orchestrated pronouncements about how rosy things are and all the excellent products GM has on the ground and on the way, the perennial train wreck called GM marketing will continue to vex and plague this company until they run out of people to blame and run the whole damn thing into the ground again.

After rearranging all of the deck chairs, firing the ad agencies, and finishing blaming the government, the unfair competition, sunspots, and my new favorite - cosmic rays – then what’s left? And more important, who’s left to blame?

And the answer is that GM only has itself to blame.

You better get crackin’, Big Ed, because by the time your so-called marketing team gets through running amuck, you’ll be lucky if you have a pot left to piss in.

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.

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