When General Motors announced in June it would pull significant business from McCann Worldgroup, the move raised questions about the Interpublic Group network’s future in Detroit. It did not help soothe Motor City anxieties when Chevy-dedicated shop Commonwealth/McCann in August confirmed 56 layoffs in its downtown Detroit office and CRM agency MRM later stated it would eliminate 123 positions at its Birmingham, Michigan office.

But in an interview this week, McCann Worldgroup Global CEO Daryl Lee said the network remains committed to Detroit, even suggesting that it would look to park more client work in the city.

“We could have decided let’s really scale back Detroit, and we’re not,” Lee said. “For one, we have the talent. Two, I really think the market has a lot of energy and grit that would be good for clients who are looking for authentic marketing. So we are going to lead a lot of global pitches and a lot of global clients for MRM out of Detroit because of the capability needs, and because we've decided to do that as an agency.”

To put itself in a better position to achieve those aims, McCann is making significant changes to its Detroit operating model and leadership structure. 

Effective Oct. 1, it will do away with the Commonwealth/McCann brand name that since 2012 has served as its dedicated Chevrolet creative shop. (It was originally formed as a joint venture between Omnicom’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners and McCann but Goodby later split from the venture.) It will now be part of McCann Detroit and employees will move from Commonwealth’s downtown Detroit office to the Birmingham location, which houses all of McCann’s Detroit staff, including MRM and Craft, McCann’s global production agency. IPG will still maintain the downtown office space, which amounts to one floor at 500 Woodward Ave., according to a McCann spokesperson.

Also read: Winners and losers from the GM review

Grant Theron, who had been leading the GM business as CEO of Commonwealth/McCann, will become global CEO of MRM and remain based in Detroit. Belinda Leworthy, who had been Commonwealth’s North American president, will take on the dual title of global business lead for GM and president of McCann Worldgroup Detroit. Fabio Costa, Commonwealth/McCann’s global chief officer since early 2023, has been reassigned to IPG’s The Martin Agency as integrated creative lead.

No more client-specific shops

Despite MRM’s loss of GM’s CRM business and Commonwealth’s U.S. creative loss, the automaker remains McCann Worldgroup’s largest global client. The network still handles Chevy creative work outside the U.S., in addition to GM corporate brand work, marketing for the automaker’s commercial business (known as GM Envolve), online used car retailing (which is called CarBravo) and multicultural marketing that is led by Casanova McCann.

But even with that sizeable workload, Lee indicated it no longer makes sense to have a dedicated GM shop. In fact, McCann is moving away from such bespoke setups across the board as it simplifies its offerings with just four brands—McCann, MRM, Craft and FutureBrand, whose specialties include design and brand architecture. 

For example, in March the network dissolved its San Francisco-based 215 McCann unit, which had been dedicated to Microsoft-owned Xbox, folding those duties inside McCann New York’s broader Microsoft team. That same month, McCann Worldgroup wound down its Performance Art agency brand—which specialized in creative technology, CRM, brand strategy and performance marketing—moving those capabilities inside McCann and MRM. 

While client-dedicated offerings became popular in recent years—especially to handle big brands—such arrangements can rob agencies and employees of flexibility. Commonwealth employees only worked on Chevy, for instance, which Lee said is “not the model we want for the future, and certainly not the best model, which is you want people to have a diversity of experience, a diversity of opportunity.”

“Re-centering on McCann Detroit means that people will come in and be able to choose the clients they work on, and after two years, they'll work on other clients,” he said. 

McCann Detroit clients include Bissell, Beautyrest and Lockheed Martin. MRM runs a range of accounts from the city, including Abbott, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic and Navy Federal Credit Union.

“What clients don’t need is an outsourced in-house agency. They don't need that from us, because we know they will build their own in-house agency,” Lee said. Clients don’t want agencies that “think like them,” he added. “They’re looking for someone who thinks like a brand, and can have a perspective about brands. I think that was a little bit, I imagine, what the impetus was behind some of the GM decisions, which they were looking for brands that would be provocative to brands that needed provocation.”

Indeed, GM did not include its creative incumbents in the review, according to Lee and others familiar with the automaker’s process. The automaker ended up with a roster including two independents—Mother and Preacher—and Stagwell shops Anomaly and 72andSunny. (All of them are located outside of Detroit.)

McDonald’s win and MRM’s future

The decision to keep Theron located in Detroit as he takes over global leadership of MRM is an example of how McCann remains dedicated to the Motor City, Lee said. MRM has more than 30 global offices, including one in New York. Also based in Detroit is Lalita Koehler, who was hired from Publicis in May as global president of Craft, McCann’s global creative production agency that operates 25 hubs. In total, McCann Worldgroup has more than 600 employees in Detroit after the recent GM-related layoffs, which were confirmed in state regulatory filings.

GM’s decision to move its CRM from MRM to Omnicom Precision Marketing Group was a significant blow to McCann Worldgroup. But it has been softened somewhat by MRM’s pick-up this year of some McDonald’s CRM; the agency landed a spot on the fast feeder global roster after a review and will run the account from Detroit. Lee confirmed.

Theron replaces Kate MacNevin in the MRM global CEO role. The New York-based executive will retain the title of global chair of MRM, in addition to her role as global chief operating officer of McCann Worldgroup. 

Lee credited Theron for being especially adept at integrating brand and performance marketing, which “for some reason have been disconnected” across the industry. 

MRM is developing a “modern, 21st century CRM capability that has an understanding of brand, but then can take that understanding and really push it into areas of commerce and customer experience,” he said. He even suggested that the GM loss might incentivize MRM to be more innovative and “more disruptive from a commerce perspective,” noting that direct selling in automotive is not mature because it is mostly driven locally by dealers.