9944: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners & McCann.

Adweek reported Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and McCann have created a joint agency to handle the Chevrolet account. It’s bad enough that Omnicom manages to keep accounts under the global umbrella via Corporate Cultural Collusion, but this move shows the holding company will conspire with any White agency to seize billings. The new enterprise is called Commonwealth—which probably means that everyone with common skin color can expect to share the wealth.

Goodby and McCann Form New Agency to Handle Chevy in Global Creative Consolidation

Commonwealth is a 50/50 joint venture

By Noreen O’Leary

Agencies at two rival holding companies have become partners in a new company, Commonwealth, formed to work on Chevrolet’s global account. Omnicom’s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, and Interpublic’s McCann Erickson Worldwide, N.Y., have signed on to the 50/50 joint venture after a creative review to consolidate the global business for the General Motors brand.

In the review launched last autumn, GM roster shops Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis Groupe and Cheil Worldwide put forth proposals to the auto marketer.

Chevrolet, GM’s largest brand, previously worked with 70 global agencies. The creation of the new Detroit-based Commonwealth agency follows the recent selection of Carat as GM’s agency for media planning and buying.

“These agency consolidations are expected to create about $2 billion in savings over the next five years, with a portion used to take advantage of key global marketing opportunities and strengthen the focus on our global Chevrolet brand, and a portion hitting the bottom line,” GM global cmo Joel Ewanick said in a statement.

GS&P has been since 2010 the lead creative agency on Chevrolet in the U.S.—the brand’s largest market—and is behind the “Chevy Runs Deep” strategy. McCann Worldwide has overseen the brand in many global markets including Mexico, Canada, Brazil, India, Japan, China and Latin America (Brazil and China are just behind the U.S. as Chevy’s largest markets). Commonwealth will now handle creative in most global regions except for China, India and Uzbekistan, where marketing efforts will continue to be handled by agencies that have been working on the brand in those countries.

Commonwealth will be managed by an eight-person global advisory board, with assignments handled through global hubs in Detroit, Milan, Mumbai and Sao Paulo. The agency’s board includes GS&P co-founder Jeff Goodby who is Commonwealth’s creative chairman; Linus Karlsson, McCann’s chairman, chief creative officer of N.Y. and London; Washington Olivetto, chairman at WMcCann Brazil and CCO McCann Worldgroup Latin America; and Prasoon Joshi, president, McCann Worldgroup South Asia.

9894: Quaker Oats Man On The Move.

Advertising Age reported PepsiCo shifted its Quaker Oats business to a new agency sans review. It’s actually another example of Corporate Cultural Collusion perpetrated by Omnicom. Give the holding company credit for apparently having locked PepsiCo into a long-term contract, as evidenced by the Quaker Oats Man’s migration from Element 79 to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to Juniper Park to Energy BBDO—all shops within the Omnicom stable. It’s only a matter of time before the brand goes to Fathom Communications.

PepsiCo Shifts Quaker Creative to Energy BBDO

Move Comes Under New Quaker CMO Justin Lambeth

By Maureen Morrison

PepsiCo has shifted creative duties for its Quaker portfolio of foods and snacks to Omnicom Group’s EnergyBBDO, Ad Age has learned.

The move, which came without a review, will shift the business handled by BBDO sibling Juniper Park in Toronto to Energy BBDO, the Chicago office of the BBDO global network.

Asked what was behind the agency change, Quaker spokeswoman Candace Mueller said, “As part of PepsiCo’s strategic investment and productivity initiatives, Quaker Foods & Snacks North America is moving to one global creative agency, Chicago-based Energy BBDO. Based on Energy BBDO‘s expertise for setting global strategy and developing breakthrough creative thinking, we believe they are the right agency to help Quaker accelerate our brand positioning worldwide. We sincerely appreciate the work that Juniper Park has done for the Quaker business and thank them for all of their efforts.”

The news comes on the heels of Quaker’s hiring a new top marketer. In January it named Justin Lambeth—a former Frito-Lay VP who led marketing for brands such as Lay’s, Tostitos and Sun Chips—CMO.

The move is a blow to Juniper Park, once a darling among Pepsi ‘s agency roster. Losing the Quaker business is another piece of bad news for the shop, which just a few months ago also lost PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay Sun Chips and Lay’s brands to Energy BBDO.

At that time, the agency still had Quaker as well as work for PepsiCo’s global nutrition group. But with the Quaker shift, Ms. Mueller said that “Energy BBDO will be responsible for setting Quaker’s global strategy and developing a global ad campaign in partnership with the Global Nutrition Group.”

It’s unclear whether Juniper Park will do any additional work for the global nutrition group. Frito-Lay was a founding client when Juniper Park opened its doors in 2007, and the agency picked up Quaker in October 2009.

PepsiCo last year spent about $53.6 million on measured media for Quaker, according to Kantar. It spent about $56 million in 2010, a sharp drop from that $80.5 million it spent in 2009.

The PepsiCo business on the whole probably accounted for most of Juniper Park’s business. Its other clients include Virgin Mobile, Delta Hotels and Canadian media company Corus Entertainment. Asked about the shop’s viability, a BBDO spokesman said that the Juniper Park “continues to operate in Canada as part of the BBDO Worldwide network.”

Energy BBDO has benefited from its sibling’s losses and has picked up activity on the new-business circuit. Last year, Energy BBDO picked up a sizable portion of the global SC Johnson account that was formerly at DraftFCB.

PepsiCo, which has a relationship with Omnicom Group, is known to play musical chairs with agencies in the Omnicom family, regularly shifting business from one shop to another. Quaker, for example, has shifted hands many times in the past five years. In 2008, PepsiCo handed Goodby Silverstein & Partners the Quaker account after it had been at Element, an Omnicom agency formed primarily to handle PepsiCo’s business. Then in 2009, PepsiCo moved the Quaker account to Juniper Park, and now it’s parked at a new agency once again.

PepsiCo has been trimming its roster of agencies. Last month, it said on the beverage side of its business that it would cut ties with more than 100 agencies.

9812: BHM 2012—Madison Avenue Ads.

If White advertising agencies produced self-promotional messages to celebrate Black History Month, the ads would probably look like these parodies.