Odd, but interesting turn of events as rival holding companies Omnicom and IPG earlier joined forces to create “Commonwealth,” which will now serve as global AOR for Chevrolet. Specifically, the Chevy business will be jointly handled by Goodby and McCann Erickson and based in Detroit. Guess our tip from yesterday afternoon stating verbatim that “GSP is going to win the Chevy business” was pretty spot-on.
GM’s VP, global CMO Joel Ewanick explains in a statement, saying, “This is the first time that two large marketing communications holding companies have come together to form a single company. Commonwealth will be based right here in Detroit, and its only focus will be on strengthening and growing Chevrolet into an iconic global brand.” The four creative execs at Commonwealth will consist of creative chairman/GS&P namesake Jeff Goodby, Washington Olivetto, McCann London/New York CCO Linus Karlsson and Prasoon Joshi.
We suppose the alignment of two major agencies, following a six-month review, shouldn’t be too far-fetched considering Goodby has been working on domestic advertising while McCann has handled a fair amount of global work. Responsibility for global efforts, according to the announce, will be transitioned by Commonwealth, save for China, India and Uzbekistan, which will continue handling regional efforts assigned to their specific agencies. We’ve been told China and India were not part of the RFP, though McCann has been leading the ad accounts for Chevrolet in said countries.