• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 14, 2005

Two thousand and five was supposed to be the year of smaller account reviews, but three months into the year one the largest automaker and one of the biggest advertisers of all - General Motors Corp. - has placed its media buying account into review, indicating that 2005 might be every bit as volatile as 2004, a year that saw major media accounts by companies such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola Co., MasterFoods and American Express, get reassigned. Now GM is throwing its $3 billion-plus media account into review, as part of an "ongoing effort to reduce costs and increase efficiencies."

While it's unclear what the primary goal of that effort will be, it comes at an incredibly awkward time for GM's media buying shop, GM Mediaworks, which operates as a unit of Interpublic's Campbell-Ewald unit. Mediaworks, which was originally engineered in 1994 by then Interpublic chairman Philip Geier, was created to help retain GM's media business when the automaker threatened a review in the early 1990s.

While the terms of that deal were never fully disclosed, it is believed that GM extracted some sizeable concessions in terms of its media buying fees in an arrangement that also commingled elements of several Interpublic shops to create a dedicated media buying unit for GM and its dealer network. The move was not the first of its kind. Both Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. had already beat GM to the dedicated media unit punch. Omnicom created the Pentacom, the first dedicated automotive media buyer, while WPP's J. Walter Thompson unit created Ford Motor Media, even before it had established its own integrated media shop, MindShare.

GM Mediaworks has evolved to encompass a host of mini media buying units to deal with specific elements of the carmakers massive media assignment, including interactive media unit GM Cyberworks, as well as GM R*Works which plans, negotiates and executes GM's involvement in events and promotions.

Then in, in an even more surprising move, GM unbundled its media planning and strategy from the Interpublic shops and consolidated them at a new dedicated media planning unit created by Starcom MediaVest Group. In many ways, the new unit GM Planworks, was a first of its kind, and to some it presaged a trend toward the unbundling of media planning and buying. And while a number of other marketers have followed suit, creating dedicated planning and strategy assignments - Procter & Gamble for one - there has been a recent backlash toward the disintegration of media planning and buying.

While it was unclear exactly what GM's goals are from the new review, which was first reported by Advertising Age, it's possible that the automaker may be seeking to reintegrate planning and buying. All that's clear is that both Interpublic's and Publicis' units will participate and that a decision is due within two months. A re-consolidation of planning and buying would be closely watched by the industry at large.

The outcome of that review could weigh heavily on both agency holding companies, but especially Interpublic, which is beset by financial troubles. Last week, Interpublic indicated some lingering accounting issues and had its credit rating downgraded by some influential credit rating bureaus.