Wieden+Kennedy is reportedly increasing the amount of work it does for Ford worldwide.
Ford first added W+K to its creative team in 2018 as an “innovation partner.” Later that year, after conducting a creative review, Ford added Omnicom’s BBDO to serve as its principal global creative agency and scaled back its 75-year collaboration with WPP. In 2020, W+K took over Ford’s American projects.
BBDO will continue to manage CRM in the United States.
The victory brings to a close a year in which Wieden+Kennedy strengthened its global alliances with three of the biggest advertisers in the world: Anheuser Busch InBev, Ford, and McDonald’s, helping to offset the smaller losses of Bud Light and KFC, which chose new agency partners earlier in the year.
Ford did not perform a formal assessment but instead decided to simplify its worldwide marketing organization under one creative agency to create brand consistency globally and provide greater operational efficiencies.
Ford’s media planning and procurement will continue to be handled by WPP agency, GTB.
All three agencies will continue to play a significant part in Ford’s multi-agency team.
Ford spent about $1.8 billion on marketing globally in 2021, with 29% of that amount going toward digital expenditures. Ford spent nearly a billion dollars on marketing, 95% of which was done offline in North America alone. With $416 million, it spent the second most in APAC, $339 million in EMA, and $27 million in LATAM. (Source: COMvergence)
Ford’s revenue recovered to pre-pandemic levels in Q2 2022 after declining during the pandemic, exceeding $40 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time since 2019.
