With performer Dinah Shore, Campbell-Ewald created one of the most memorable ad campaigns in automotive history.

Campbell-Ewald has had one helluva long run as the advertising agency of record for the Chevrolet division of General Motors. An impressive 90 years. 4,680 weeks. 32,850 days. Millions of billing hours. 1,000+ current employees. Thousands of talented and semi-talented alums.

These are more than just numbers, they are representative of the dedication, passion and reliability of the company and the people that shaped and helped make the Chevrolet brand the one-time market leader and the biggest generator of bottom line profits for General Motors.

From personal experience I can say, without fear of contradiction, “it was a great place to work!”  The hours were good, the pay rewarding, benefits reasonable, liberal vacation time, good expense accounts and for the most part the “C-group” – CEO, COB, CAS, CCO, CFO — of executives were real pros.  Of course there were exceptions.

Non-agency people and companies who provided creative, marketing and production services to the agency were well rewarded for their contributions too.  While known as a conservative shop, CE pioneered many media, marketing and advertising innovations.

During this almost century long relationship CE cleared the way for many divisional executives — and several sycophants — to reach lofty corporate positions of importance at GM itself. It was more than the ole boy network: it was cronyism.

And that was when General Motors was the world’s biggest, respected and most self-important business organization in business history. GM holds many patents, but if it were possible, there was a time when the company’s most distinctive creations were corporate arrogance, excess and hubris, which had to have been invented ‘on the boulevard.’  But I digress.

Campbell-Ewald  was the ultimate advertising machine generating as many if not more ads, campaigns, radio and television commercials, promotions, brochures, billboards, and collateral material than the total number, 8.5 million (bucks GM just “repaid”  but I won’t get into that here) or 40 billion dollars that may never get paid.

Somehow, sometime in the mid-90’s Campbell-Ewald lost its advertising mojo for Chevy. Bright became boring. Interesting morphed into ineffectual. Creativity lacked charm. Sensitive turned stupid. Concepts lacked clarity. Audacity turned arrogant. Campaigns appeared compromised.

The news last Friday generated a media reprise of the so-called hit campaigns and advertisements created for Chevy over the years including Like a Rock, Made in the USA,  Heartbeat and American Revolution; yet to me they are contrived and corporately defensive, certainly not compelling.  Dinah’s “See the USA and, of course, “Apple pie, baseball and Chevrolet” struck more personal, responsive and meaningful chords if automotive sales are a reasonable indicator.

So it was no surprise to me – an outside observer – when the news hit the fan.  I’d alluded to the probability of CE’s loss of GM months ago — even before a previous announcement revealing the move of some Chevy business.  Should it have been done sooner? Yes. Could it have been smoother? Doubtful.  Was it necessary? Yes.

Will the new agency change things? We’ve all seen the results when other GM brands have switched agencies in recent years: boring, bland and bad, very bad advertising.

It’s just one more devastating result of the ineffective, inefficient corporate failure of GM that will impact the lives and livelihoods of very talented creative, account, media, research and new media maven now working at Campbell-Ewald.  And that’s not just a shame. It’s a crisis.  Following last year’s bankruptcy, the automaker needs to be delivering the most eye-catching and effective advertising in the industry, at least if it hopes to thrive, not just barely survive.

I believe CE should have seen it coming?   What do you think?

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Copy of internal email at Campbell-Ewald, for Bill Ludwig, CEO and President:

As many of you heard me say this afternoon at our all employee meeting, we were informed that GM has made the decision to transition the Chevrolet business from CE to Publicis by the end of this year. At this time, what we know is that Car will move immediately, Truck by the fall and the remainder of the Chevy brand business by the end of the year. We do not know the specifics of the transition plan yet — we will be discussing more details with Chevy next week. We will continue as one of GM’s family of agencies working on OnStar, GM CRM and Velocity Marketing, and we look forward to future opportunities to demonstrate the breadth and depth of our capabilities.

Everyone here needs to realize they can look themselves in the mirror and know they’ve been a part of creating some of the best work in the industry. We should be very, very proud of our legacy on the Chevy business. No other agency has created such iconic work, which includes See the USA in Your Chevrolet, Heartbeat of America, Like a Rock, and American Revolution.

I know the number one question on everyone’s mind is, “What next?”. I’m trying to be as transparent as possible, and part of being transparent is providing information as it becomes available, which means not always having all the answers.

At this point, let’s be clear, you have all helped build this agency so that we can thrive. You may not realize, but 75% of our business is non-Chevrolet brand business.

And we are winning new business…just yesterday we announced the win of the Freedom Group brands, including Remington.

Stand tall. Be proud. We’ve got a tough road ahead of us, but let’s take the high road and handle this with grace. We will continue to service our GM clients well, both through this year and beyond.

This agency has an enormous amount of talent that we can bring to bear in our next chapter. We will continue to grow iconic brands and prosper.

Thank you.

Bill Ludwig