L.A.’s Chiat/Day Wins $150-Million Nissan Ad Account

Nissan, in a move to boost disappointing sales and fuel inject its fuzzy image, handed its $150-million advertising account on Monday to the Los Angeles-based ad firm Chiat/Day.

“We’re going to make the name Nissan stand for something,” said firm chairman Jay Chiat. “They hired us to do breakthrough advertising, and that’s exactly what we plan to do.”

The firm will also seek to create a “brand personality” for Nissan, he said, which has been frustrated in trying to develop an image around a name brand that American consumers formerly knew as Datsun. That name change in 1984 irked dealers and confused customers.

“We want Chiat/Day to put us on the map--now,” said Joe Opre, director of advertising for Nissan, the Carson-based U.S. distribution arm of Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

The announcement was not only news in the auto world, but in the ad business as well. With the addition of the Nissan account, the billings of Chiat/Day’s Los Angeles office more than double to $270 million and will become the ad agency division with the largest billings on the West Coast. It pulls ahead of the Los Angeles office of Foote, Cone & Belding, which currently has annual billings of $230 million.

Chiat said the agency expects to hire 40 additional workers in Los Angeles during the next three months.

Agencies all over the nation competed for the rich account once word came three months ago that Nissan had fired its previous ad agency, New York-based William Esty Co. after 10 years. Car companies are among the nation’s biggest advertisers and major accounts change rarely.

Although Nissan’s total U.S. car sales are up 4.8% for the first six months of this year compared to last, the company pumped many millions of dollars into improving four of its car lines and “expected far better sales out of the changes,” said Brad Hontz, director of East Coast operations for Productive Access, a Philadelphia-based automotive market research firm.

Nissan is the first to admit that it suffers an image problem. “Most people are very aware of our Z-cars and our trucks,” said Opre, “but after that, they don’t know much about our other models.”

With sales at a lower-than-expected volume and millions of dollars worth of new products sitting in showrooms across America, Nissan executives decided to wait no longer.

The new Nissan ads--with a new slogan and new jingle--are expected to premiere around Oct. 1. Senior officials from both Nissan and Chiat/Day met Monday to plot strategy. And they are expected to concentrate heavily on life style advertising. “We don’t want to talk about doors that fit cars,” says Nissan’s Opre, “but cars that fit people’s life styles.”

Chiat/Day is an agency that has given companies identities before. But that has not always resulted in improved sales. Three years ago, its offbeat advertising campaigns for Apple Computer and Nike both won industry acclaim and public notice, but the ads failed to increase sales. Partly as a result, the agency lost both accounts last year. The ad firm also handled ads for Honda in the early 1970s and worked for Porsche until last month.

Some competitors wonder if Chiat/Day--which doesn’t even rank among the top 20 largest ad agencies in the country--is up to the job. “For them to take on an account of this size is an enormous task,” said Cy Schneider, president of the West Coast office of the ad firm Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt, which handles some of Chrysler Corp.’s advertising. “To staff up for it will be a tremendous undertaking.”

Indeed, it will take some doing, said Alan O. Pando, chairman of West Coast operations for the ad firm DDB Needham Worldwide. “It will be like organizing the Normandy invasion.”

HOW ASIAN AUTO MAKERS SHARE THE U.S. MARKET Japanese and Korean imports accounted for 24.3% of U.S. passenger car sales in the first six months of 1987. The total of 5.1 million cars includes U.S.-built models. Acura 1% Honda 5.6% Hyundai 2.5% Isuzu 0.3% Mitsubishi 0.7% Mazda 1.8% Nissan 5.8% Subaru 1.5% Toyota 5.1% Source: Ward’s Automotive Reports