DeLorean hires ad agency to launch the brand's first new car in 40 years

DeLorean Motor Co. has hired Austin, Texas agency Bakery as its creative and media agency of record. The appointment marks the first time the automaker has worked with a lead agency since 1995.

DeLorean, which became a cultural icon thanks to the “Back to the Future” cinema trilogy beginning in 1985, hadn't produced a car in 40 years until it announced its upcoming Alpha5 model in 2022. The automaker has been trying to build anticipation for the Alpha5, with the release date scheduled to be announced in February 2024.

The company was looking for an agency that could help it “tap into culture,” according to Cameron Wynne, the chief brand officer of DMC and son of Stephen Wynne, the mechanic who revived the current DeLorean Motor Co. in 1995. During the six-month-long review process, the company met with several small agencies as well as AKQA New York, Wynne confirmed. 

This is a significant win for Bakery, which currently has 55 employees and works with clients such as Diageo, Shiner Beer and Nike.

The brand is best known for its iconic role in “Back to the Future,” where its DMC-12 model was used as a time machine. The sexy gullwing vehicle played a starring role despite the fact that its original manufacturer went out of business three years before the first film hit theaters.

In the 1990s, Wynne acquired the inventory, intellectual property, rights and trademarks from the company founded by the notorious John DeLorean in 1975. John DeLorean, a visionary engineer, was also a polarizing figure who was acquitted on drug charges. The current company uses the DeLorean branding but is completely separate from the original company.

Bakery will handle creative and its recently launched media agency, Ken Media, will field media planning and buying. Bakery will also focus on product innovation for the company. Wynne said he was looking for a small agency specifically because they are typically more nimble.

Tapping into culture

The need for an agency came as the automaker is looking to set up the launch of its Alpha5 car in a highly competitive electric vehicle market. CEO Joost de Vries said he is banking on the DeLorean name and engineering heritage to enable the vehicle to stand out in the segment as technology in the EV space becomes table stakes.

“The story has to be beyond creating a tool that gets you from A to B,” de Vries said. “We need to build icons for the industry that people recognize as a DeLorean and have that wow factor.”

Micky Ogando, founder and chief creative officer of Bakery, said the challenge for the brand is unique given its fame but startup nature. Ogando compared DeLorean’s fame to that of the Batmobile and the Ecto-1 from “Ghostbusters.”

“We need to manage the legacy and media love that the brand has, but we also need to build something that has a new meaning for a new generation that is looking for something that the EV category right now has lost in the last few years,” Ogando said. “The category has become utilitarian and boring. Right now you see a Tesla more often on the street with an Uber sticker on it than in some kind of a showroom.”

DeLorean has already been working to build awareness for a brand that has not launched a new model in four decades. Most recently, a prototype of the Alpha5 was featured in “Fast X,” the latest film in the “Fast & Furious” movie franchise.

“That’s exactly what we're talking about when we say that we want to bring excitement back to the EV category,” Ogando said.

Last year, DMC launched a series of images that reimagined a timeline of what DeLorean cars would have looked like over the years if the company released new models after the original DMC-12. Also last year, DMC collaborated with Hot Wheels, recreating miniature versions of the DMC-12 and the Alpha5. In 2021, for its 40th anniversary, the company launched an NFT collection along with a car giveaway.

Wynne said DeLorean is currently working on additional collaborations, such as featuring the car in an upcoming “Need for Speed” game and graphic T-shirt merchandising within stores. The company will also be focused on developing other parts of the EV business such as building e-bikes and go-karts.

Imitating sneaker culture

DeLorean is also stoking demand with a membership club and exchange program meant to mirror a sneaker business model like StockX, according to Wynne. 

Customers interested in purchasing an Alpha5 must pay an $88 membership fee, an homage to the 88 miles per hour speed required for the car to time travel in the “Back to the Future” movies. Once a member, people can then reserve a randomized production slot, which comes with an NFT, for a price that was originally $2,500 but goes up by $500 for every 500 reservations made. Through the exchange, members are able to transfer, trade or sell their slots to other members. Members are also able to have first access to any other product drops and VIP events.

De Vries confirmed that there are currently 20,000 members registered across 69 countries. The membership system has also helped the company create potential customer profiles, which could inform future marketing decisions, de Vries said.

“We are going to launch a product early next year [other than the Alpha5] that will try to cater towards the more traditionalists of the brand,” said de Vries, who declined to elaborate. While DMC declined to specify if the new product is a new car, Ogando hinted that “there are upcoming models that haven't been announced yet.”

“What we're seeing in our modeling is that it's a fairly young group that's going to be super excited by something that is maybe more stylistically on the retro spectrum than on the modern spectrum. Whereas if you look at the Alpha5, [the customers for that] is more the traditional, let's say 45-55 [age range] ... that is emotionally connected to the brand, but maybe not towards the DMC-12.”

Equity in the company

Bakery didn’t just win the account, it also became an investor in DMC, which wasn’t part of the original pitch. Ogando said he negotiated an equity stake in the company to be part of the agency’s fee.

“They have an outline for the next 10 years basically of what this brand is going to be,” Ogando said. “We felt so strongly about it that we decided let's not even talk about a performance model. Let's jump into the deep end of the pool.”

DeLorean declined to disclose Bakery’s stake in the automaker. The deal is part of Bakery’s equity program called Sugar, in which the agency works with startups.

“I kind of went through the process of looking for an agency secretly thinking, hoping, somebody would do this,” Wynne added. 

DMC’s challenges don’t just include awareness, but also a lawsuit it filed in 2022 against NBCUniversal claiming the media giant failed to pay royalties owed to the company. The company stated that it acquired intellectual property and trademarks for the DeLorean in 1997 and that it has a right to 5 percent of the revenue from merchandising and commercial tie-ups connected to the “Back to the Future” films.

DMC declined to comment on the suit beyond this statement: “We strongly protect our intellectual property and anybody that wants to come up against us, we are vigorous in protecting our intellectual property.”