FCA Splits with “Imported from Detroit” Ad Agency

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Portland, Ore.-based Wieden+Kennedy are splitting after a six-year collaboration that produced some of the U.S. auto industry’s most memorable ad campaigns, Advertising Age reports.

W&K generated Chrysler’s gritty “Imported from Detroit” television commercial with rapper Eminem and “Halftime in America” with actor-director Clint Eastwood. It produced the current “Premium to the People” spots, which feature a presidential election theme, with actors Martin Sheen and Bill Pullman.

The agency also promoted FCA’s Dodge lineup with ads about the Dodge brothers, who founded the brand more than a century ago.

Ad Age notes that FCA has increasingly used a variety of agencies in the U.S., sometimes for one brand over a short period. The carmaker tapped Omnicom Group to make one of two ads for Jeep that aired during last month’s Super Bowl, for example.

The magazine notes that Olivier Francois, FCA’s chief marketing officer, shuns the conventional agency-of-record approach to advertising. He cites what he described to Ad Age in January as the company’s “fragmented” needs.