News last night that Mazda North American Operations, responsible for marketing, distributing and servicing the brand in the US, Canada and Mexico, has dumped long-serving agency Doner for WPP will resonate with anyone in the auto and advertising sectors but should not be seen as reflecting badly on the outgoing incumbent.
Doner, which still counts brands such as Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid and Wilson Tennis as clients, will take its leave from MNAO HQ in Irvine knowing it created one of the auto industry’s best-known taglines – ‘Zoom Zoom’ – used on almost every piece of paper or email with Mazda’s name on and often heard, in a husky female voice, at the end of every TV ad. That will continue even as WPP, long Mazda’s European agency, takes over across the Pacific. If imitation is flattery, I doubt it’s coincidence that Seat’s ‘auto emocion’ tag is also recited by a similar husky voice in that automaker’s European TV ads.
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That said, we in the media could do quite nicely without having “Zoom Zoom” blared out across the office every time we log on to Mazda Europe’s press website and it took a few blunt emails some years ago to get that stopped…
Having once taken the PR shilling and worked for a ‘full-service’ agency, before the internet boom, I know that regular client ‘reviews’ are a hazard of life. You can constantly refresh the account handlers, fizz constantly with new ideas to promote The Client’s products/firm/message/mission, etc, but still, once in a while, they call for ‘pitches’ and off the chiefs go to compete with rivals to keep -or lose – the business. All it takes is a new director of marketing at a client, with his or her own ideas and a favourite agency, and it’s bye-bye account.
Getting advertising, marketing communications, brochures and all the electronic variants of same under the potential buyer’s nose is a lot harder now there are so many print publications, websites, social media networks, video delivery methods (not just broadcast TV now) and so on. Once upon a time, you put an ad on TV and, in pre-VCR three-channel Britain, where just one actually ran ads, you had a one in three chance of it being seen. Now, with, hundreds of satellite channels, PVR ad-skipping, Facebook, You Tube and all the rest, where best to pitch for the client? And that’s just one aspect.
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A slight clue to MNAO’s decision comes in a Dow Jones report today. Apparently, Doner’s current owners acquired the firm from its former chief executive late last year, and it reportedly has been trying to pivot from its reputation as a TV-oriented agency to one focused more on digital media campaigns. Perhaps that’s where WPP had an edge.
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By GlobalData
