The campaign was designed to promote the manufacturer's range of cars and marked a further integration of the Vauxhall and Opel brands, which until 2004 created their own advertising.
GM called a pitch for the campaign among its roster agencies at the beginning of last year (Marketing, 19 April). However, the plans have stalled as GM has struggled to develop a consensus over what the Vauxhall Opel brand stands for. The campaign is due to launch in May.
Opel brand communications director Olivier Danan admitted that the process had not been finalised. 'We are still working on it,' he said. 'It has been a long process, and although we haven't been working on it continually, an umbrella positioning is a difficult campaign to crack.'
The umbrella campaign was intended to maintain awareness of the marque while it goes through the second half of 2007 without launching a model.
According to sources close to the marque, there has been criticism of the strategy from some of its markets, many of whom would prefer to use the budget to run local, model-specific campaigns.
Since Opel executive director of marketing Alain Visser was appointed in 2004, the company has been holding pitches for the launch of individual models among its roster agencies, which includes DLKW and Lowe.
The resulting work is rolled out outside the winning agency's home market by McCann Erickson.
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