Flash: Volkswagen Fires Crispin! Is It Worth Having a Review?

What does it mean when a car brand fires an agency?

Perhaps not that much, unless you happen to be living with one of the principals of the incumbent, in which case you might as well pack up and take a long vacation in Kenya or the Antarctic, because your significant other isn’t going to be fit to live with for some time to come.

Volkswagen this week called a review on its $200 million-plus account at Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, Boulder, CO, after almost five years together.

There will be those who claim they could see it coming. The brand has new global and U.S. marketing directors and the parent is anxious to see the brand grow market share everywhere and certainly in America.

Sales here are down this year, but only 13 ½% compared to an industry average of 30%. But maybe sales alone don’t tell the whole story.

Tim Ellis, vp/marketing for Volkswagen of America isn’t giving very many clues on what sparked the decision. He issued a statement saying: “Our goal of rapidly increasing our volume in a mature market requires the Volkswagen brand to evolve into a more relevant mainstream choice.”

I suppose the emphasis here is on “mainstream,” raising questions about Crispin’s sometimes oddball work for a brand that didn’t seem itself sure of what it wanted to be in the competitive United States market. Sometimes it stood for safety, sometimes for value. Its cars other than the Beetle at the low end and the Touareg at the high end were mostly mid-market.

So what kind of agency is Volkswagen looking for? Ellis didn’t say. Most commentators are handicapping either another creative agency or something a bit more safe.

David Kiley, the respected Business Week auto specialist says in a post to B/W’s website Monday, when the story broke, that he is expecting Omnicom’s DDB, Volkswagen’s agency in most other markets, “to pull out [all] the stops to win the business.”

He rates IPG’s Deutsch/L.A., which has handled Saturn and Mitsubishi, as a top contender. [Saturn has just been bought by Penske and it’s expected that spending will be cut way back and the account moved or done in-house.]

But IPG may get a signal from GM to hold Deutsch out of the VW pitch on the chance that GM’s new marketing czar Bob Lutz will put Buick, now at Leo Burnett, or Cadillac, now at Modernista!, up for review later this year.

Another IPG agency hungry for a car account is Lowe/New York, led by British creative star Mark Wnek. Wnek’s team did the “born from jets” campaign for Saab, only to see GM move the account several years ago to McCann/Detroit.

Moving down the IPG ladder is the Martin Agency, with Saab and Maserati in its DNA. The Martin Agency won Wal-Mart’s stunning $400 million business over a year ago and has managed to digest it nicely. So maybe VW could lure it into the scrum.

If Volkswagen finds itself locked out of the IPG stable, there are still plenty of other great agencies on the horizon—namely the three “old” creative sisters: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco; Wieden & Kennedy, Portland; and Fallon, Minneapolis.

Fallon lost BMW several years ago to GSD&M, Austin, TX, where it rests, apparently safely, today. Goodby lost Saturn to Deutsch/L.A. and then had Hyundai for a time, only to find the brand moving its advertising in-house. Wieden hasn’t had a car for decades. It’s perking along nicely with Nike and some Coca-Cola business, and no doubt would be interested in a car. Its London office has done iconic work for Honda, but there’s no sign the marque is thinking of moving the U.S. account from Rubin Postaer & Associates, Santa Monica, CA.

But all of them should ask how beat up VW felt by Crispin’s sometimes famously quirky work. All good creative agencies get cranky at times; how else can they come up with work that’s interesting and breaks through the clutter? But unless VW is ready to give its agency some room to breathe, none of these fine, creatively-focused companies would want the business.

VW AG has named Fiat marketing chief Luca De Meo as its new global marketing chief. If he wants to insure the brand communicates the same values in its advertising all over the world, he’d be better off directing Tim Ellis to go with DDB.

According to press reports in Detroit, Volkswagen of America wants to quadruple its 800,000 cars and light truck sales by 2018. Besides the lower-priced Beetle, the mid-range Tiguan, GTI and Jetta and the $30,000-$40,000 range CC and the Touareg (over $40,000), it will introduce a new compact sedan next year and begin producing a new mid-size sedan soon in its new Chattanooga, TN, assembly plant. So the pressure will be on to step up the pace.

This blog is written on a Tuesday, only a day after the review was announced – and six days before the trades publish their in-depth look at the pitch. I don’t like to compete with the weeklies. But for my money, it’s DDB/New York’s account to lose. I’m not sure Eric Silver counted on pitching a major car account six months after taking the creative helm of DDB/NY. But with DDB’s awesome global resources and its closeness to the parent in Wolfsburg, it’s hard to imagine any other agency having much of a chance.