The Stellantis Automotive Group recently publicly announced that it will be holding a major overhaul of strategies affecting advertising marketing for the U.S. market. Specifically, as written by Automotive News, Stellantis will focus more on five brands, namely Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, and Ram. Part of the strategy put in place by the automotive group was also dictated by the strong need to contain costs, as the market is becoming increasingly difficult to keep under control. for this very reason, one of the measures Stellantis takes is precisely to try to optimize the impact of advertising campaigns, with the goal of greatly improving the sales performance of each brand.
Checking the effectiveness of advertising agencies
Spearheading this new strategy is Stellantis’ purchasing department, which has set as the first goal of the advertising review to be able to assess the effectiveness of the agencies that are currently working with Stellantis by carefully evaluating the creative strategies they employ. This should serve the purchasing department to be able to identify which are the best opportunities in advertising, maximizing the return on the investment that is made each year.
Getting into the details of the current strategy, we know that incumbent agencies such as GSD&M which works for the Dodge brand and Doner which instead deals with Ram, are currently under the eye of Stellantis’ dedicated department. Stellantis’ other flagship brand for America, namely Jeep, has confirmed its partnership with Highdive.
The new chief marketing officer of Stellantis US Raj Register expresses his opinion on this strategy
Expressing his opinion on this strategy was Raj Register, the new Chief Marketing Officer of Stellantis US. Indeed, he confirmed that this important review will be held, as well as emphasizing the great importance of evaluation in a periodic manner of the agencies that collaborate with the group. At the same time, he also pointed out that the company demands to adopt an approach that is completely flexible and as personalized as possible for each different brand.
Advertising investments in the first six months of the year for different brands
According to the findings of some data that have been carefully analyzed, it seems that advertising spending is very unbalanced among the various brands. Jeep, for example, tops the list with $170 million that was spent in the first six months of the current year alone. Next, we find the RAM brand with $124 million spent, also in the same period.
As for the other brands, such as Dodge, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo and Fiat, the budget used in the first six months of the year was much less. In fact, we are talking about markedly different figures, as we go from the $32 million spent by Dodge to Fiat, which spent only $2 million.
Reassessment of the strategic plan of advertising marketing post declining sales in the U.S. market
With this decision to revise Stellantis’ advertising marketing strategic plan, it comes at a very unusual time for the company. This is because, over the past few months, the Group has seen a significant drop in sales in the U.S. market itself. Additionally, there have been very significant episodes throughout the company, such as the departures of executives who had worked for Stellantis for a long time. Moreover, a factor that also made for much discussion was the ongoing confrontation with the UAW union, which is trying in every way to safeguard its workers in Stellantis plants. Precisely for all these purposes, the revision of advertising strategies is part of a broad context, which absolutely wants to improve business efficiency and agility.
Stellantis switches working partners to seek excellence
This move that Stellantis has implemented to overhaul the entire operation of the various advertising agencies that work with the automotive group is nothing new. Actually, on several occasions during the past few years, the company has found itself changing its working partners, driven by the constant search for ever more creative and innovative solutions that are capable of greatly strengthening the name of the brand in question. In fact, Raj Register is in the throes of a major transformation of Stellantis’ marketing, which wants to focus more on integration between different disciplines, orienting the entire company toward achieving concrete results.
Now, we just have to wait what will be the big news that will characterize Stellantis’ next advertising marketing moves. The company is certainly trying to maximize its resources as much as possible, just as it wants to draw all the work it can from its partners. The need to improve market presence in the United States is quite pronounced, so the work will be done solely with the perception of maximizing each brand in the eyes of consumers.