Mazda looks beyond WPP as it refines its marketing approach

Mazda North America, which has been closely aligned with WPP for years, has begun looking outside of the holding company for more agency assignments as it takes on a new marketing approach. 

While WPP still handles a large chunk of the automaker’s work—including lead creative duties—the holding company’s Mazda-dedicated unit, known as Garage Team, has been quietly wound down in recent months, with work now distributed to individual WPP agencies including VMLY&R, Wunderman Thompson, Hill+Knowlton and GroupM, Brad Audet, chief marketing officer for Mazda North American Operations, confirmed to Ad Age.

Mazda has also grown its relationship with non-WPP shops, including performance marketing firm Optimal. The firm, controlled by private equity firm Orix Capital Partners, recently became Mazda’s search agency of record, while also adding media planning and buying duties for marketing of Mazda’s new CX-50 compact crossover.

Also new on Mazda’s roster is independent shop Finn Partners, which began working for Mazda late last year with a lifestyle PR assignment and has since been retained for more work.

Mazda spent $101 million on measured media in the U.S. in 2022, according to Vivvix, including paid social data from Pathmatics, up from $69 million the year prior.

Remote work

The agency changes are a significant move for Mazda, which had primarily relied on WPP’s Garage Team since it was formed in 2010 and located in Orange County, California, near Mazda’s North American headquarters. Audet knows WPP well—he was an executive VP for Garage Team for seven years before taking the Mazda CMO job in 2020. But he said that Mazda’s new marketing approach requires that it look beyond the holding company for some tasks.

“Back in the old days, you get aligned with one agency, and they would provide the majority of your services,” he said in an interview. “And I think what we've realized, and what the marketplace has shown, is that you require basically an ecosystem of specialists … to attract customers now, just given the complexity of technology, data [and] fragmentation of different ways to connect with customers.”

The decision to wind down Garage Team, which has been underway for several months, was partially influenced by the pandemic, he said. 

“Two-thirds of the team was centralized in Southern California. But during the pandemic, obviously, everybody started to work remote,” he said, including at Mazda. “The virtual work environment affords companies the opportunity to attract the best talent regardless of their location. And so we've really kind of leaned into that.”

“Rather than having a singular bespoke dedicated agency, what we're doing is picking the pockets of specialism within WPP’s agencies … that are managed by us to help us achieve our business objectives,” he added.

Asked if Mazda is actively looking for more non-WPP agencies, he said “not specifically right now,” adding that “it all is dependent on the needs of the business.”

WPP did not provide a comment.

Recent news: WPP cuts revenue guidance

A key leader at Optimal also has WPP ties—George Rogers, who became executive chairman of Optimal in March. Rogers departed WPP in 2019 after a long career. He helped create Garage Team as well as WPP’s bespoke Ford agency Team Detroit, which was later renamed GTB. (GTB lost a chunk of the Ford business in 2018, including creative duties now held by Wieden+Kennedy.) 

Bespoke agencies ‘not for everybody’

Those bespoke shops were predecessors for what would later become a wave of client-dedicated agencies created by multiple holding companies looking to solve all client needs in a single holding company model. They are still prevalent, including at WPP, which in 2021 won Coca-Cola’s massive agency review by assembling a Coke-dedicated unit called Open X that houses multiple functions. (Coke still retains a roster of outside creative shops for some work.)

Rogers in an interview said that such bespoke agency creations are “not for everybody.”

“The reality is clients have come to the realization that not one company has all the talent, and especially specialized talent, in the world,” he added. Mazda, he said, “needs to go and grow, and they need to get the talent they need to perform anywhere they can get it.”

Optimal’s specialty is performance marketing, although it has expanded its capabilities with recent acquisitions. Formerly known as Optimad Media, it relaunched as Optimal in late 2022 after acquiring Effective Spend, an Austin, Texas-based firm specializing in paid search, social media advertising, search engine optimization and retail media. Optimal also owns DSPolitical, a political and public affairs digital advertising firm that has worked with Democratic and progressive candidates, according to its website.

Audet said Optimal provides a “unique combination of performance marketing, but also being able to deliver on a desirable brand experience at the same time.”

Premium position

Mazda's U.S. sales fell 11% to 294,908 vehicles in 2022, with its market share falling to 2.1% from 2.2% the year before, according to Automotive News. But Mazda’s sales jumped 28.7% in the first six months of 2023 compared with the same period last year, and its market share increased to 2.4%, according to Automotive News data.

The automaker has focused on carving out a more premium positioning in recent years. In 2018 it launched a new tagline, “Feel Alive,” meant to lure customers who are “creative, ambitious and imaginative,” according to a press release at the time. Recent advertising has not included that tagline. Audet said Mazda is working on a new brand platform, although he did not disclose details.

Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at Edmunds, which provides car shopping information to consumers, said there are “risks associated with Mazda setting its sights on establishing itself as more of a premium brand.” 

“The buyer pool has not grown proportionately with the number of brands who have tried to move upmarket, and as pricier vehicles dominate the new market, buyers with less to spend are naturally being pushed into the used market,” she added. Mazda, she said, “has always tried to distinguish itself from its Japanese counterparts by touting itself as the brand for people who enjoy driving.”

For years that approach was embodied in the “Zoom Zoom” tagline. Asked if Mazda would ever bring that tagline back, Audet said, “We very much believe in the joy of driving and what ‘Zoom Zoom’ embodied in its intention—and I'm sure that wherever we go in the future, there'll be a strong linkage to that.” But, he added, “I doubt we'll bring it back as ‘Zoom Zoom.’”