After Taking U.S. Bailout, Chrysler Hires Italian Agency
http://adage.com/article?article_id=140855
Chrysler Group's Olivier Francois, the president-CEO of the Chrysler vehicle brand, has tapped Armando Testa, his ad agency for Italian Lancia, to refashion a Lancia commercial for the U.S. market. Hiring an Italian agency for the work may not sit well with American taxpayers, who bailed out the ailing Chrysler earlier this year with billions of dollars in loans. And all of the several hundreds of staffers of Chrysler Group's longtime ad agency, BBDO Detroit, will be out of work at the end of January when the contract expires.
Peter DeLorenzo, founder of Autoextremist.com and a former BBDO creative on Dodge, called the new work from the Italian ad agency "patently absurd." He said, "I'm sure the hundreds of people from BBDO who are being blown out the door are going to just love this, not to mention the U.S. taxpayer." If Chrysler was bent on social causes, the brand should have contributed to food banks in the region surrounding its suburban-Detroit headquarters. "At least there would be a shred of relevance in that gesture."
