Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Cadillacs Are Cool

"Cadillac signs on to Hill Holliday ad firm; Will take lead on account worth up to $250m" by Gail Waterhouse |  Globe Correspondent, June 12, 2013

Boston’s Hill Holliday and two other members of advertising giant Interpublic Group landed a plum new contract Tuesday — the multimillion-dollar campaign for Cadillac....

Cadillac has seen steadily rising sales, and is reporting the highest year-over-year sales increases compared with other brands in the General Motors family, but still lags behind its foreign luxury competitors.

With powerful — and stylized  — new models, Cadillac has increasingly tried to appeal to a younger demographic. But Chiranjeev Kohli, marketing professor at California State University Fullerton, said the brand that became linked with with senior citizens had yet to win over a large swath of the car-buying population....

Hill Holliday’s chief creative officer, Lance Jensen, though, has a knack for tuning into younger consumers. He has run campaigns for Napster and MTV and also was the creative force behind the wildly popular “Drivers Wanted” commercials for Volkswagen that positioned the carmaker as the hip brand for younger motorists....

Geoff Klapisch, a professor of advertising at Boston University, said Jensen and Jensen’s former colleague at Modernista, Chris Wallrapp, now the marketing director at Hill Holliday, will probably give Cadillac an edge in an extremely competitive advertising market....

Hill Holliday is best known for its ad campaigns such as the Dunkin’ Donuts “You Kin’ Do It,” and Bank of America’s “Life’s Better When We’re Connected,” but has not handled many car accounts....

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Also seeHill Holliday’s Lance Jensen steers Cadillac account