MUMBAI: In a first of its kind move, global giants Omnicom and Interpublic Group have entered a 50:50 joint venture to service the global creative account of General Motors‘ brand Chevy.

The JV, Commonwealth, will be led by a global advisory board of eight members including McCann Worldgroup South Asia president Prasoon Joshi.

The collaboration is between Omnicom owned Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which was previously Chevy‘s lead agency in the US and IPG’s McCann Erickson, the brand‘s lead agency in India, China and Latin America will be called Commonwealth.

The size of the account serviced by the JV is $1 billion. Prior to this Chevrolet employed 70 agencies across the globe.

The account was awarded to the two agencies after a multiagency pitch that started at the end of 2011. The other agencies involved in the pitch include Publicis Groupe and Cheil Worldwide.

The new business which will be based in Detroit, will develop creative campaigns across all media platforms for Chevrolet.

Earlier this year GM awarded the global media mandate to Aegis‘ Carat Media.

The global advisory board will oversee creative initiatives and strategy. Goodby Silverstein & Partners founder Jeff Goodby will serve as creative chairman while other members will include McCann Worldgroup Latin America chairman and chief creative officer Washington Olivetto and McCann New York and London chairman and chief creative officer Linus Karlsson.

 These four creative leaders will work in collaboration on all major creative initiatives and resource allocations. Campaigns will be handled through global hubs, which will operate in Detroit, Milan, Mumbai and Sao Paulo.

According to the company‘s annual report GM spent $4.47 billion on advertising in 2011 most of which was used to market Chevy. The company said that cutting back on the number of agencies, and streamlining ad production and its media buying process could save the company $2 billion over the next five years.