Joel Ewanich landed at GM with guns blazing. GM’s new marketing head left a similar job at Nissan without having been there long enough to find the coffee machine. And his first act at General Motors was to replace Campbell-Ewald and Publicis with Goodby Silversten and Partners as Chevrolet’s agency of record.
Many of the snarks are saying “Why not hold a review?” and “He never even met with the old agencies” but the reality is Mr. Ewanich knows Goodby from their time together on Hyundai, be wanted Goodby, and he is in a hurry. If he wants Goodby, why pretend to put the business up for review and waste everbody’s time and money? Whether this decision turns out to change the market share for Chevrolet is still to be played out but I’ll give Mr. Ewanich credit for strong leadership. He didn’t vacillate publically or do the politically correct thing — he made a decision and is getting to work.
Goodby is a great shop. It knows consumers. Gareth Kay was the planning leader at Modernista when Hummer was humming. I don’t know Mr. Ewanich from Adam and though the Hyundai advertising may not have been crazy memorable, it absolutely delivered solid marketing ideas and results. This move makes sense to me. But as fast as it was done, it can be undone. We learned that already. Peace!
