Campbell-Ewald Advertising

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Campbell-Ewald Advertising

30400 Van Dyke Avenue
Warren, Michigan 48093
U.S.A.
Telephone: (586) 574-3400
Fax: (586) 575-9925
Web site: http://www.campbell-ewald.com

Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc.
Incorporated: 1911
Employees: 1,300
Sales: $1.7 billion (2004 estimate)
NAIC: 541810 Advertising Agencies

A subsidiary of The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc., Campbell-Ewald Advertising is a Warren, Michigan-based advertising agency long associated with General Motors Corporation’s Chevrolet division. Since the late 1990s the agency has taken steps to step out of the shadow of its primary client and added such accounts as Alltel, Carrier, Michelin, XM Radio, the U.S. Postal Service, and the U.S. Navy. By 2007, Campbell-Ewald was serving 43 clients. In addition to its Detroit-area office, the agency maintains branches in Los Angeles and the United Arab Emirates.

AGENCY FOUNDED: 1911

Campbell-Ewald was founded in Detroit in February 1911 by Frank J. Campbell and Henry T. Ewald. Older by six years, Campbell brought more experience to the partnership. In the late 1890s at the age of 20 he became advertising manager for the Pontiac Press-Gazette, which he used as a stepping-stone to taking over the advertising chores at Detroit’s Aerocar Motor Car Co. and Cartercar Co. in Pontiac. Because the automobile industry was in its infancy it came as no surprise when Aerocar went out of business in 1907. Campbell struck out on his own, forming the Campbell Advertising Service, taking on whatever clients he could drum up. His big break came when the New Jersey-based Hyatt Roller Bearing Company opened a Detroit sales office to attract the business of car manufacturers and awarded its business to Campbell because of his experience with Aerocar and Cartercar. The person he would answer to at Hyatt was Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., the future president and chairman of General Motors.

While Campbell was nurturing his business, Ewald was producing promotion materials for the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Co. (D&C). Born in Detroit, he had first become associated with D&C as a 14-year-old in 1899 when he worked as a clerk and a messenger. As part of his duties he delivered the zinc etchings of the company’s advertisements to the Detroit Free Press, and became enamored with the printing process, as well as with advertising. At just 19 he was named D&C’s advertising manager. He first met Campbell in 1903 in Chicago when they attended a meeting of the Associated Advertising Clubs of America. Ewald was then instrumental in the founding of the Adcraft Club of Detroit, which Campbell also joined. The two first worked together around 1907 when they developed a publicity stunt to demonstrate how large a new D&C-built ship was by driving an open-air Aerocar with four passengers wearing hats through a section of its massive steamstack. They received a great deal of press attention, benefitting both their clients; this prompted the two men to consider a possible partnership.

Before any business arrangement was made, Ewald accepted a job as the assistant advertising manager for Studebaker Corp., thereby gaining two years of valuable experience in the automobile industry. He remained interested in pursing an agency career, however, and in January 1911 he went to work for Campbell as production manager while the two men began to lay the groundwork for a new agency. On February 2, 1911, the state of Michigan granted a charter to the Campbell-Ewald Company. It started off with six employees and two clients: D&C and Hyatt Roller Bearing. For a slogan, which indicated the shop’s focus, they chose, “We care not who makes the nation’s cars, if we may write and place the nation’s advertising.”

The young agency began to attract clients among the changing ranks of the auto industry, such as United States Motor Car Corp., an amalgam of several smaller carmakers; Hudson Motors; and the Flanders Electric Car Co. In short order a branch office opened in Saginaw, Michigan, followed by offices in Chicago and New York. The company made a name for itself in 1916 when it developed what was likely the first automotive advertisement to use color, showing a red brake light reflected on a stretch of wet pavement.

The partnership lasted only until 1917, when Campbell decided to retire to work for the YMCA in France, which was in the midst of World War I. After the war he would work briefly in advertising in Detroit before giving it up to pursue a myriad of other activities, such as catching live rattlesnakes. He died in 1951 at the age of 72, crushed by a 2,000-pound boulder while hunting for agate stones.

Although Ewald was now the firm’s sole owner he elected to retain Campbell’s name. He now began to build up his roster of clients among the carmakers that comprised General Motors (GM). In 1919 the agency developed its first ad for Chevrolet, but would have to wait to win the account. It first secured the Buick account in 1920, followed a year later by Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Oakland Motor Car (later elbowed aside by the Pontiac brand), and GM Truck. Ewald now moved his personal office into the General Motors Building in Detroit. A short time later, in early 1922, Campbell-Ewald won the entire GM advertising account, valued at $6 million. Thus, in one stroke Campbell-Ewald ranked among the country’s top five advertising agencies. Ewald promptly moved all of the agency’s operations to the General Motors Building.

BUSINESS PEAKS IN 1929

More branch offices opened in Lansing, Michigan; Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; and Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. An office was even opened in Paris. The agency also enjoyed internal grow. The dramatic increase in automobile sales in the 1920s resulted in large numbers of people taking to the roads, where they became targets for a new form of advertising, the roadside billboard. To coordinate its national billboard advertising, Campbell-Ewald formed the Outdoor Department in 1925. To handle GM’s global aspirations, Canadian branches opened in Toronto and Montreal, and another overseas branch was opened in Sydney, Australia. Campbell-Ewald handled the advertising needs of all the GM brands, which specialized in cars at all price points. The largest slice of the market was the low-price territory staked out by Ford and its Model T, which had changed little since 1914. Chevrolet trailed badly in sales but with Campbell-Ewald’s promotional abilities and a willingness to add some style to this class of car, Chevrolet finally outpaced Ford in new car registrations in 1927, a distinction the brand would hold for nine out of the next 12 years. By the end of the 1920s Campbell-Ewald operated in 13 cities, serving 100 clients. Billing reached a record $26 million in 1929.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

For over 90 years, we have been growing our broad communications expertise to meet all the advertising and marketing communications of our clients and to help drive their marketplace success.

Despite the stock market crash in October 1929, Ewald remained optimistic about the new decade, but soon it became apparent that the economy would not enjoy a quick rebound. When the Great Depression set in and consumers were unable to buy new cars, carmakers had less money to spend on advertising. Tied closely to the fortunes of GM, Campbell-Ewald suffered when the company decided that its brands should be represented by different agencies. Ewald was able to win back some of the business by forming independent subsidiaries to handle individual accounts. Nevertheless, Campbell-Ewald experienced a steady erosion in billings, falling to $12 million in 1932 and $8 million in 1938. The agency remained innovative during these trying times, however. In 1930 it formed a Radio Department, which soon launched the “Chevrolet Chronicles,” hosted by World War I flying ace and race car driver Eddie Rickenbacker. Future radio great Fred Allen would make his debut on the show. In 1931 the agency became the first to use gold ink in a magazine ad. At the end of the decade, Campbell-Ewald formed a subsidiary, Motor City Publishing, to publish Friends, a glossy magazine for Chevrolet owners that was similar in tone and content to the popular Life magazine.

The Depression lingered into the early 1940s and did not come to an end until the economy roared to life due to military spending in support of the United States’ entry into World War II in late 1941. Although America was back to work and consumers had money in their pockets, wartime restrictions prevented them from buying many of the products they craved, such as new cars, a situation that hurt Campbell-Ewald, which saw its billings bottom out at $5 million in 1942. The agency continued to promote GM, but mostly to tout the company’s contribution to the war effort. It was also able to win nonautomotive clients, such as Eastern Airlines, Detroit Edison, Champion Paper and Fiber, Hanna Furnace, and several steel companies. Billings increased to $10 million by the end of 1944.

With the end of the war in sight, Ewald began looking to position the agency to prosper in what he expected would be economic boom times. An important component of advertising, he recognized, would include television. In 1941 the agency produced its first television commercials for the Hat Style Council, a fashion industry organization that promoted the sale of hats and each year named its “best-hatted men of the year.” Campbell-Ewald established a television department in 1944, and two years later Chevrolet became the first car company to become a regular sponsor of television programming. In 1948 Chevrolet became the first company of any kind to sponsor coverage of the Olympic Games. In that same year Campbell-Ewald coined the slogan “See the USA in your Chevrolet,” for use in local dealer TV commercials.

Ewald also began to groom someone to succeed him. In 1944 he recruited Henry G. “Ted” Little from Nash-Kelvinator to serve as the agency’s general manager. The 43-year-old Little had 25 years of advertising experience, having gone to work for the Los Angeles agency Lord & Thomas right out of high school. In 1945 Little was promoted to executive vice-president, and in October 1952 he became president. Just three months later, Ewald died at the age of 67, leaving Little to build on the foundation that he had laid for more than 40 years.

Little encouraged his staff to seek new business and also took steps to improve the agency’s creative work, which he believed had grown stale. A new style of ads were developed for Chevrolet, placing the cars in interesting, often idealized settings, whether it be a sunset or a slice of Americana, to create an emotional appeal to the audience, making them want to be in that locale with that car, or appealing to the audience’s sense of patriotism. A major addition to the agency’s roster of clients came in 1956 when Campbell-Ewald began handling the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. account. Later in the decade the agency won such accounts as United Aircraft, Midwest Steel, Goebel Beer, and National Bank of Detroit.

In 1961 Campbell-Ewald celebrated its 50th anniversary. The agency served 45 clients, which produced a record $95 million in billings, but about 80 percent of that amount came from one account, Chevrolet. The agency maintained 11 offices around the country, mirroring Chevrolet’s field office network. Total billings had increased to $131 million by the time Little retired in 1966. A power struggle then ensued when some executives opposed the plans of the new president, Tom Adams, who wanted to expand the business through acquisitions rather than internal growth, afraid that the agency would be relegated to regional status, a medium-size agency at a time when medium-size agencies were fading from the scene.

KEY DATES

1911:: Frank J. Campbell and Henry T. Ewald form a Detroit advertising agency.
1917:: Campbell retires.
1922:: Agency secures entire General Motors account.
1930:: Radio advertising department established.
1944:: Television ad department formed.
1953:: Ewald dies.
1972:: Campbell-Ewald merges with Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG).
1988:: Agency is grouped with other new IPG holdings and becomes known as Lintas: Campbell Ewald.
1997:: Campbell-Ewald drops the Lintas association, continuing to operate under IPG.
2000:: Company lands the U.S. Navy account.
2004:: Alltel account is won.

Adams prevailed, assumed the chairmanship of Campbell-Ewald in 1968, and began to beef up the branch offices to handle non-Chevrolet work. He also looked overseas for acquisition targets, well aware that consolidation was sweeping an advertising industry that was becoming increasingly global. In the early 1970s he was scouting for operations to acquire in Europe and Japan when he received an offer from the Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) to bring Campbell-Ewald into its fold. Realizing that the agency could achieve the kind of international scope he wanted in one stroke, Adams and management agreed, and in May 1972 Campbell-Ewald merged with IPG in what was then the industry’s largest agency merger in history.

With IPG’s backing, Campbell-Ewald expanded in a number of directions. In 1975 Campbell-Ewald International was established in London with 14 offices in the United Kingdom, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. Soon a Brazilian agency was added and working relationships were forged with ad agencies in Japan and Scandinavia. A new umbrella organization was formed in 1976, Campbell-Ewald Worldwide, which established its headquarters in New York. Its four components included Detroit’s Campbell-Ewald Co. (the headquarters would move to suburban Warren, Michigan, in 1978, to follow Chevrolet); Campbell International; New York-based Tinker Campbell-Ewald (the former Tinker, Dodge and Delano); and Clinton E. Frank, Inc., a recently acquired Chicago agency.

By the end of the 1970s Campbell-Ewald Worldwide generated total billings of more than $500 million. With the addition of Marschalk Company in 1980, the umbrella company took the name Marschalk Campbell-Ewald Worldwide. When Adams retired in 1984, Campbell-Ewing had become the global enterprise he had envisioned.

Just a year later, however, IPG reconfigured the parts. Both Campbell-Ewald’s international components and those of Marschalk were transferred to the newly acquired London agency: Loew, Howard, Spink. Thus, Campbell-Ewald was essentially once again a Detroit-area ad agency, primarily catering to the needs of Chevrolet. Nevertheless, that same year, 1985, it added a Miami office where it established Campbell-Ewald Latina.

More changes ensued quickly, however, and Campbell-Ewald was again made to regroup. IPG acquired Sullivan, Stauffer, Colwell and Bayles (SSC&B), which held a minority stake in Lintas, the in-house ad agency for Unilever. IPG then acquired the rest of Lintas, creating SSC&B: Lintas Worldwide. In October 1987 Campbell-Ewald was added to that mix, the merger resulting in Lintas Worldwide, with business divided between Lintas International and Lintas: USA, which included the newly named Lintas: Campbell-Ewald.

INDEPENDENT ONCE AGAIN: 1997

The fit with Lintas was not smooth, however. Campbell-Ewald management maintained that it was losing client accounts due to name recognition problems. In 1996 Anthony Hopp became Campbell-Ewald’s seventh chairman. The following year, he oversaw the return of the agency to autonomous operations known simply as Campbell-Ewald. Hopp restructured the agency and began aggressively pursuing non-GM accounts. In the late 1990s the agency added such clients as Amway Corporation, Borders Group, Pier 1 Imports, Univision Communications, and Mercury Marine. Campbell also looked to once again grow beyond a single Detroit-area office, opening a branch in Los Angeles to accommodate Chevrolet. By the end of the 1990s Campbell-Ewald, still under the IPG umbrella, but operating autonomously, was the 15th largest ad agency in the United States.

In the early years of the new century, the agency also began looking overseas, as management became interested in adding offices in Europe and Asia. In the end it opened a branch in the United Arab Emirates. The Los Angeles office, in the meantime, struggled to attract clients beyond Chevrolet. To provide it with more work, the Farmers Insurance account was transferred from the main office to Los Angeles in 2001. One of Campbell-Ewald’s major wins during this period was the Navy account in 2000. Other accounts would be lost—such as Pier 1 and Delta Faucet in 2004—and others gained, including Alltel in 2004 and the University of Michigan Health System in 2005, which prompted the founding of Campbell-Ewald Health. In 2006 Ewald secured more new business, which allowed the company to expand into several new categories. New clients included Intuit, a software company; Janus Capital Group, a mutual funds company; and Olympic Paints and Stains, in the home improvement sector. Although far less dependent on its Chevrolet business, Campbell-Ewald still remained very much connected to the automaker it grew up alongside.