SUBARU CANADA SWITCHES TO U.S. AGENCY
By Adnews Staff
Those Subaru television commercials featuring Australian actor Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) driving an Outback sport-utility wagon seem to be doing a good job. The car maker's Canadian division has hired the U.S. agency that did the commercials, Texas-based Temerlin McClain. In Canada Subaru corporate ad spending last year was $1.8 million and dealer advertising $2.7 million, according to A. C. Nielsen estimates. Subura Canada national advertising manager Geoff Craig says the reason his company hired Temerlin is all in the numbers. Sales south of the border have being going steadily up since 1994 when the Texas agency started a doing advertising for Subaru's U.S. division, Subaru of America. After Subaru Canada adopted Temerlin's advertising strategy for all-wheel drive vehicles, it watched sales grow steadily. The last half of 1995 saw six straight months of improved sales in Canada over the previous year, and sales for the first three months of 1996 are 71% ahead of last year. Subaru attributes much of this success to the Outback, which has been supported by the Paul Hogan commercials since the launch of the vehicle last fall. Temerlin will take over the Canadian account from Quarry Communications of Waterloo, Ont., which has been adapting U.S. creative and handling media for Subaru since the demise two years ago of the Toronto shop that had been Subaru's main Canadian agency, Miller Myers Bruce DallaCosta. "This North American consolidation of advertising resources makes good sense from a business point of view," says Craig. The account will be managed from Temerlin's Toronto office, which also handles American Airlines in Canada. Temerlin is obviously bent on getting bigger in Canada. The agency joined Bozell Palmer Bonner of Toronto last year in an unsuccessful pitch for the account of Canadian Airlines, which is one-third owned by American.