GM hands £20m account to Draft

Draft Worldwide has won the combined UK below-the-line account for the General Motors-owned car brands Vauxhall and Saab, believed to be worth up to &£20m a year.

The Vauxhall business moves from TBWA GGT. Draft, which is owned by Interpublic, already had the Saab account. The two agencies pitched against McCann Relationship Marketing, which handles Vauxhall elsewhere in Europe, and DLKW Dialogue, the integrated arm of ad agency DLKW, which is on Vauxhall’s above-the-line roster.

General Motors is reorganising its European operations. Last year, after a marketing restructure initiated by GM Europe marketing chief Jonathan Browning, it consolidated the &£97m media buying and planning account for all its brands into Initiative Media (MW September 11, 2003).

There will also be increased co-operation between the brands. The Vauxhall marketing team is now in charge of implementing marketing for its sister brand Saab. It is likely that the different marques will increasingly share research and development and common design and components.

GM still denies widespread rumours in the car industry that it plans to drop the Vauxhall brand in the UK, in favour of Opel, which it uses in the rest of Europe (MW May 13). However, it has announced that Daewoo will be rebranded Chevrolet across Europe this year. Chevrolet is GM’s value brand in the US.