General Motors moves £105m German task from Lowe to McCann

General Motors (GM), the owner of Vauxhall, has dealt a blow to Lowe Lintas by giving its largest piece of European business – the £105m German ad account – to sister Interpublic agency McCann-Erickson Worldwide.

The move means that McCann is now the car manufacturer’s main European agency and the London office of Lowe Lintas is the only remaining branch of the agency to handle GM business.

McCann’s appointment will also result in some of its major pan-European advertising for the launches of individual marques being carried in this country. In Europe the GM brand is known as Opel.

The shift reunites McCann with the business after 14 years. In 1986, Lowe Howard Spink (as it was then known) set up a Frankfurt office and took the business from McCann.

Change, a subsidiary of Lowe Lintas in Frankfurt, handles Toyota’s central European business and this is understood to have been one of the main factors behind the move of the GM business into McCann. Change was a former subsidiary of Ammirati Puris Lintas, which merged with Lowe Howard-Spink at the start of this year.