General Motors has awarded Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest Chicago with its 3.2 billion US buying account. The account had been with Interpublic's (Universal McCann's) GM-dedicated agency, GM Mediaworks Detroit for national and LCI New York, for regional buying. The move covers Dealer Association advertising as well (600 million in advertising). The GM buying account is valued at 40-50 million in annual revenue to IPG. The buying functions will move to the Planworks umbrella officially 10/1 (then, all a part of Starcom), with no name change expected.

Betsy Lazar, GM's General Director of Advertising and Media Operations, called the review two months ago. Part of the reason was reported in-fighting between GM Mediaworks (under Rick Sirvaitis) and Starcom MediaVest Group's dedicated planning agency, GM Planworks Detroit (under Dennis Donlin).

Donlin, who will now be in charge of it all, tells RBR/TVBR there was no "real rift. We've been partners for a long time. Even within a company like Starcom, there's always kind of a natural dynamic tension between planning and buying. That always exists, even within the same company. We've worked through issues, but we've always had a good partnership. So it wasn't anything at all about that. It was much more about the economies of scale and the vision to really drive against a lot of emerging opportunities for GM, as the media landscape changes. It was a much more strategic discussion, it wasn't about friction-more purely about efficiencies."

Under your direction, what kind of recommendations do you think you'll be giving GM's marketing and advertising folks? More product placement?

"We have had some successes, some have been fairly public like the Oprah and the Apprentice deal, and a few others we've kept to ourselves. And we are very interested in continuing to develop out those kind of ideas."

Will this move by GM change the upfront strategy at all?

"The current GM Mediaworks team, which we've been meeting with over the last couple days, we are in total strategic sync with. They will be handling and negotiating...and we are completely supportive of that team and their capabilities."

So nothing really changes until October 1st?

"Well, the transition will be completed by October 1st, but for the purposes of the upcoming upfront, absolutely nothing changes on that team. We have total confidence in them."

GM has had a tough quarter and is getting beat up pretty bad by the analysts. Any ideas on how to turn that around with the media and planning tools at your disposal?

"Other than to say that under Mark LaNeve's [GM VP/Sales, Service and Marketing] leadership, the team at General Motors is really driving toward a focused solution for all of our divisional brands. And we are looking to be aggressive in terms of how we transition through this tough time. We have some new product that's really starting to get some traction in the marketplace-the G6, The Cobalt, etc. And that's in the car segment, which has been a real challenge for us. Even though there is a ton of press out there and the core financial issues are challenging, we're hoping that a story bubbles up from underneath that if you start to look into some specific opportunities, we're starting to get some momentum in the marketplace."

Mark LaNeve, told RBR/TVBR Mediaworks and Planworks would have to prove themselves worthy, as part of an extensive interview (8/20/04 RBR #163); (8/23/04 RBR #164); (8/24/04 RBR #165); (8/25/04 RBR #166).

RBR observation: As Donlin said, the moves will be "aggressive." This is Lazar's and LaNeve's plans being put into motion. The goal? As Director of Pontiac Marketing at General Motors Mark-Hans Richer told us in a four-part interview last September, 'When it comes to the modern media environment, for us, it's taking our products and making them not only the center of the story, but the thing that makes the story interesting, worthwhile watching or taking about. Hat's what we mean by, sort of, 'product fusion.' So it's not just product placement. Placement just means just stick a car in a frame and watch it drive by. That's different. We would never, ever spend $10M just to have a car driving down the road in a major motion picture. We would much rather spend that same amount of money producing our own film with top creative talent.'

Stay tuned, linked, connected and uploaded, because GM is getting all eight cylinders firing in tandem. LaNeve is not going to hold back when it comes to employing new and revolutionary media and strategy. Donlin and Lazar will be there to make it happen.