Source: Campaign
Volkswagen has launched a global creative ad agency review, in an effort to ensure greater communication consistency throughout the world, announced VW’s CMO Jochen Sengpiehl. Within this move, they intend to build five units, composing of teams from a single holding company – but it is not necessarily looking for the same one to run all five.
The move would consolidate the account into big regional hubs covering Europe, China, North America, South America and the rest of the world, but in each region the brand plans to continue collaborating with local agencies for some of the work.
Although VW is headquartered in Wolfsburg, Sengpiehl said a decision on where to base the European powerhouse had not been made – and London was one possibility, along with “other capital cities”.
Regarding the reasons for this move, Sengpiehl said VW used “too many” agencies and production companies and wanted to change this.
“We want to improve our brand visibility and our consistency,” Sengpiehl said. “So we are moving in a direction of making central campaigns. That means of course we collaborate very closely with our European markets, but at the end someone needs to make a decision and produce all these assets. In the past we have had a couple of videos, a couple of assets, and now we have masses of content. This is something that no one [market] individually can afford.”
VW’s global media business, which has been handled globally by Omnicom’s PHD since 2016, is not expected to be part of the review, according to people familiar with the matter.
