A General Motors’ announcement about the end of Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ involvement in Chevrolet’s Commonwealth partnership with McCann Erickson could come as early as Wednesday, sources said.
Harris Diamond, who became CEO of McCann Worldgroup in November, has played an active role in driving the change. Diamond, who was scheduled to moderate a Monday morning political discussion panel at the 4As Transformation conference in New Orleans, cancelled at the last minute due to a meeting with a client believed to be GM. Final details have been hammered out in the last two days and Goodby co-founder Jeff Goodby was said to be traveling to Detroit on Tuesday.
Representatives at Goodby and McCann declined comment.
Nearly a year ago, Omnicom’s Goodby entered into the Commonwealth joint venture with its Interpublic competitor in an initiative created by Joel Ewanick, who was then GM's global CMO. Goodby took the creative lead role in the United States (Chevrolet’s largest market), while McCann handled the brand in international markets like Mexico, Canada, Brazil, India, Japan, China and Latin America. A global board of eight people led Commonwealth, including McCann creative leaders Linus Karlsson, Prasoon Joshi and Washington Olivetto and Goodby himself.
At the time of Commonwealth’s creation, sources said agency parent companies Omnicom and Interpublic negotiated a notice period and payout in the event the partnership did not continue in its original agency formation. It could not immediately be determined how that would be affected by negotiations for Goodby staffers to stay on at Commonwealth under McCann’s hire.
Goodby has has worked on Chevrolet since May 2010, when Ewanick shifted the U.S. business without a review. (Ewanick had worked with the agency in previous roles at Hyundai Motors America and Porsche.)
During the 2010 World Series, Goodby launched a campaign tagged, “Chevy Runs Deep” and the agency subsequently opened its first office outside of San Francisco in downtown Detroit, near GM. By July 2012, Ewanick was out of GM, after a series of controversial decisions, including a sponsorship deal with U.K. football team Manchester United. Alan Batey, GM’s North America vp, sales and service, stepped in as interim CMO.
In December, Batey began to make changes. Chevy’s Silverado brand was moved out of Commonwealth and into Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett. A month later the company said Goodby’s “Chevy Runs Deep” was being dropped for a new tag “Find New Roads.” Sources said McCann's Karlsson, chief creative officer, global brands, has played a major role is shaping the new positioning. “He was able to give GM the confidence that he could take the creative lead on Chevrolet,” said one source.
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