Nearly two years after Chrysler moved the Jeep advertising account to San Francisco boutique agency Cutwater from Detroit giant BBDO, the automaker says it is sending the business back to the Motor City. Yet BBDO won’t get the same account it had back in 2006; Chrysler has cut advertising spending on the Jeep brand by roughly one-third.
Cutwater, which is closely tied to Omnicom Group, earned a major industry coup when it “stole” the business from BBDO. Jeep was Cutwater’s first account, but Chrysler returned the account back to BBDO “to maximize our efficiencies and effectiveness of our efforts going forward,” according to Chrysler senior vice president of North American sales and marketing Steve Landry.
Jeep sales were down about 30 percent last year, but advertising spending was down even more. In the first ten months of 2008, Chrysler spent $108.6 million in measured media on the Jeep brand compared to $244 during the same period in 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
