• by Laurie Petersen , March 13, 2007

General Motors has consolidated the back-end work on the Web sites for all eight of its automotive brands with Digitas, and also named it the creative interactive agency of record on the Saturn brand.

The consolidation, said Ryndee Carney, manager of advertising and marketing communications for General Motors Corp., was a strategic step designed to help the automaker better exploit the Web by having a uniform underpinning for all eight brands--Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Chevrolet, Saturn, Saab, Cadillac and Humvee.

Boston-based Digitas also picked up some more work for the GMC corporate site, Carney said.

Digitas already handled the back-end work for Buick, Pontiac, GMC and Saab. It picked up the Chevrolet, Saturn, Cadillac and Humvee duties from the brands' respective creative agencies earlier this quarter, Carney added.

The additional digital front-end creative AOR assignment for Saturn was awarded to Digitas after Saturn shifted its overall advertising account from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to Deutsch/L.A last month, Carney added. The account size was not released.

The win adds to strong momentum for Digitas, which was acquired earlier this year by Publicis Groupe. According to sources, the agency has hired 117 new people in the past two months.

In addition to the General Motors assignments, Digitas this year was also named interactive AOR for the Hillshire Farms brand of Sara Lee Corp., and interactive AOR for Miller Brewing.