Jaguar moves advertising to start-up agency – Spark44

Jaguar moves its advertising to Spark44

Advertising in the car world – actually, any world – is moving faster than it ever has. The Interweb has changed the established dynamic so much that traditional advertising - and traditional advertising agencies – struggle to know how to operate.

Print advertising for car makers makes much less sense than it ever did, even though many cling to it like a comfort blanket. More than that, car makers still see print media as the influencers; the place petrolheads go for their fix and their advice. But they’re wrong, and the numbers should speak for themselves.

The real place to communicate with car-buyers is now online. That’s where the instant car news is and that’s where car buyers and car-lovers go for information and opinion.

Some car makers have embraced this to a degree; others less so. Some see on-line advertising in an odd way, like Ford who seem to think that ‘Social’ is the be-all and end-all. Others seem to ‘get’ how it needs to work, but then spoil it by using interaction numbers as the only indicator of worth.

But it’s all still so new that no car maker has come close to communicating with the on-line audience properly. All still seem to view on-line as the second tier. Which is a shame. More so for them than us, the on-line car media.

Jaguar – or at least their Ad Agency, Euro RSCG Worldwide – has made a pretty good fist of their on-line marketing presence. They market quite sensibly online, even if they do seem to see on-line as the poor relation, almost the after-thought. But that might be about to change.

Jaguar are ending their six-year relationship with their existing Ad Agency – Euro RSCG Worldwide – and are taking their estimated £60 million advertising budget off to pastures new.

Those pastures new seem to be a newly created agency – jointly-owned by Jaguar – called Spark44, which will have just a single raison d’être – to promote Jaguar worldwide.

Spark44 – which list its principals as Alastair Duncan, Steve Woolford, Bruce Dundore and Werner Krainz – looks like being California-based, and its principles can boast a plethora of experience in advertising – much of it with car makers.

Whether a new advertising agency for Jaguar is going to see a smarter and less blinkered rationale when it comes to online advertising remains to be seen. But it would be good to see Jaguar as on the money with its advertising as it is with its cars.

Interesting times ahead.

By Cars UK