Arc Sets Up Shop With Burnett in Detroit
The Publicis siblings will focus on ideas that will work in multiple media for clients like GM and Dow.
Publicis-owned marketing services agency Arc Worldwide has opened a Detroit office with sister agency Leo Burnett Detroit.
Burnett’s Detroit and Chicago offices have been working with Arc Chicago for the past two years on the General Motors account, developing interactive work that includes Cadillac.com, Goodwrench.com and the Cadillac “Under5” campaign. The GM and Dow business currently being handled by Leo Burnett Detroit and Arc offices in Chicago and New York are planned to fully transition to Detroit over the coming year.
“We are approaching the establishment of Arc Detroit as a way to change the focus of our agency and become a model for how Leo Burnett should organize and work,” said Jim Moore, president at Leo Burnett Detroit and global account director on the GM account. “Our focus will be on idea-generation as opposed to advertising. We might communicate the idea through a digital communication, CRM activities, TV, print or a promotion. The key is to develop a strong idea and then determine the means to communicate it.”
Arc Detroit will deliver Arc’s four global disciplines: direct/database, interactive, promotional, and shopper marketing. The Arc and Burnett creative teams will be co-mingled in the same work areas, to improve interaction between them.
Arc Detroit will be headed by Matt Stoll, senior VP and client solutions partner. Stoll joined Arc Detroit from JWT in Detroit, where he established and had been running the JWT unit responsible for digital, CRM, brand content, events, metrics and analytics. Don McKinney, senior VP and executive creative director, has joined Arc Detroit from Publicis in Seattle, where he was senior VP and director of creative holism. Rounding out the team are Skip Drayton, operations director; Eric Bowe as director of digital strategy; and Matt Ciampa as creative director. Arc Detroit expects to add other staff as needed in 2006.
Last year, Leo Burnett’s Detroit and Chicago offices, and Arc Worldwide created an integrated Cadillac “Under5” campaign, which was comprised of online and offline elements that included a contest that led Cadillac fans to submit more than 2,600 five-second films at Cadillac.com.
As a result of the campaign, 43,000 more people requested dealer information than during the same period last year. Traffic to Cadillac’s site increased by 458 percent during the six-week period following the launch of the campaign, driving 1.5 million more visitors to the site than during the same period last year.
“With campaigns like Cadillac Under5 already under our collective belts, there’s no denying the Arc/Leo Burnett partnership works and has been a huge success,” said Marc Landsberg, president of Arc Worldwide. “The decision to open an office in Detroit was the logical next step in continuing to solidify our important relationship with General Motors.”
