Following the appointment of Raj Register as the new head of marketing nationwide, the company is implementing a series of changes that completely overhaul its partnerships with the advertising agencies that manage the group’s major brands.
Changes affecting major brands
This major strategic change directly involves five major brands in the group. In fact, we are talking about Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat and Ram. For each of them, Stellantis is changing the way it communicates and promotes, with the aim of making the brand image stronger and increasing visibility in the U.S. market. Stellantis has also decided to maintain the following as its advertising partners
Doner, which recently became the lead agency to promote the Ram brand, will continue to be an integral part of this project. Likewise, GSD&M will retain management of the Dodge brand. In addition, GSD&M has also been given the task of taking care of the marketing of other major brands such as Alfa Romeo, Chrysler and Fiat.
This reorganization comes at a difficult time for Stellantis in the United States. In fact, the automotive group is experiencing a sharp decline in sales and the loss of an increasingly large part of one of the markets it considers most important. Despite these great difficulties, Stellantis has decided to try to reduce costs equally and reorganize its marketing strategies, thus trying to make sure that it will be able to reverse this negative trend.
Register brings changes for U.S.
Register, appointed Director of Marketing for Stellantis in the United States, explained that the decision to review advertising agencies is a regular company practice, implemented only when the situation calls for it. The company, rather than relying on a single agency for all its brands, prefers to take a more flexible approach by directly proposing agencies to submit proposals for individual brand advertising campaigns in the U.S. market.
One important thing to note is that the Jeep brand has not been involved in this set of changes and continues its partnership with Chicago-based agency Highdive. This is a company known for the success of its advertising campaigns not only for Jeep, but also for other major brands such as Lays and State Farm. Detroit-based Doner has worked with the Jeep and Ram brands before and, after the recent termination of its partnership with Stellantis by The Richards Group, was chosen as the lead agency for the Ram brand.
From the information that was provided by MediaRadar, a clear picture of Stellantis’ advertising priorities is revealed. Jeep and Ram are the brands that benefit from most of the advertising investments being executed. Ram, in particular, allocated more than $184 million to promotion in the first nine months of 2024. The other brands receive significantly lower investments. For example, we see that Dodge invests $44 million, Chrysler $10 million, Fiat $5 million, and Alfa Romeo only $2 million over the same period. Now Stellantis, which is currently being led by Elkann, just wants to prepare for the future. In fact, the imminent selection of a new CEO in early 2025 marks another important step toward renewing the company and implementing new long-term strategies.