Last year, I asked the same question and I think the answer was “no.”
Audi’s terrific A3 TDI commercial led the automotive pack, ranked 6th of 65 by USAToday but all the others were also-rans. Here’s how the automotive participants ranked in last year’s advertising beauty contest:
A dismal showing by the auto industry. Despite being one of the highest interest product categories with some often fantastic products, we seem to be unable to captivate the Super Bowl audience.
To be clear, getting highly ranked in USAToday’s poll has nothing to do with judging a TV commercial’s effectiveness, it simply is a measure of a panel of consumers’ reactions and “how much they liked each ad.” But it is without question, ‘the game within the game.’ As a Super Bowl advertiser you spend $3MM or so for 30 seconds and the chance to get noticed and liked. It’s an opportunity to get tongues around the world wagging about your ad, your brand and maybe even your products.
But to make that happen, you have to do something amazing. (more…)
This morning Chevrolet’s campaign for the new Cruze broke. Two televsion commercials produced by Goodby with Tim Allen as the voice-over.
Nothing earth shaking here, nicely produced and very product focussed, the commercials clearly make the point that the Cruze is a car that is surprising people. “Get used to more” is a nice line and a huge improvement over “Excellence for all.” More than anything else the tone and manner sets these executions apart from recent Chevrolet work:
These commercials certainly make the point that the Chevrolet Cruze offers a lot versus the competition and is worthy of a look but they do not offer a big “ah ha” regarding the positioning of the Chevrolet brand.
It will be interesting to see where they go from here.
I was speaking with a colleague the other day and we were trying to think of an instance where an automobile manufacturer (or any brand for that matter) looked back into its own history and re-introduced a brand tagline that had been thrown in the bin.
We couldn’t think of any and we began to talk about what a mistake that was. We were able to rattle off a number of instances, where great automotive brands walked away from positioning or taglines that perfectly encapsulated their brands. Mercedes-Benz left behind “Engineered like no other car in the world.” Volkswagen threw away “Drivers wanted.” Chevrolet moved away from “Heartbeat of America.” A few months ago, BMW, one of the most consistent marketers in the industry, looked as if they were moving away from “The Ultimate Driving Machine” in favor of “Joy.” In the case of BMW, this has been hotly denied and “TUDM” still appears at the end of the ads but it has certainly been demoted.
Why does this happen? Why does it seem so difficult for marketers to realize that they have a real asset that needs to be protected and nourished? A lot has to do with the constant pressure to increase volume and the find something new to “take the brand to the next level.” The other factor is the constant churn of marketing management and agencies. New marketing leadership needs to demonstrate that it is moving the business forward and that means doing something new. Every agency is genetically coded to do something “new and unexpected” to burnish their reputation. Bringing back an old idea can also be seen as a copout.
So it struck me this morning when I read an article in Advertising Age where Joel Ewanick was interviewed and he said that Fallon (Cadillac’s new agency) had developed the brand’s soon to be introduced tag-line: “The new standard of the world.”
We wouldn’t expect one of the buff books to have a comparo between the 2011 Corvette and the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee but in marketing circles there’s an active discussion going on comparing their new advertising.
Chrysler’s new ad for the Jeep Grand Cherokee first appeared about a month ago and seeks to stir Americans’ pride in our heritage as builders and innovators:
Chevrolet’s new ad for Corvette appeared last week on the All-Star game and draws a parallel between our country’s space program and the 2011 Corvette:
Some critics have gone as far as saying that Chevrolet should not have aired the Corvette commercial because it was too similar to the Jeep spot. There are certainly similarities between the executions. (more…)
Last year, fresh out of bankruptcy, General Motors ran the first ad with Ed Whitacre. At the time, GM rationalised the Whitacre ad by saying:
“The spot will set up a wider TV campaign featuring commercials about each of GM’s four surviving brands: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac.” Automotive News, 9/10/09
The implication being that the brand advertising would clarify the brands’ identities. Almost three heads of marketing later, we still have yet to see an ad or an idea that positions these brands clearly in the marketplace. Three of the four GM brands have not put a stake in the ground telling us what they stand for (GMC is the exception and that work was done years ago).
Last week it leaked out that Chevy was going to have the tag-line “Excellence for all.” That idea has been roundly criticized as a strategy looking for an execution. We used to describe an idea like this by saying its “strategy is showing.” The point of course is that it lacks passion, emotion, bravado, something magical that makes you feel something about the brand, rather it’s as if research wrote the line. Chevrolet is truly one of America’s most storied and iconic brands, surely it deserves better.
Predictably the industry was quick to blame Publicis (Chevrolet’s new agency), I think that’s misplaced.
Ironically, exhibit number 1 in defense of Publicis is the new Cadillac campaign from Bartle Bogle & Hegarty. Just announced yesterday, here are a couple of the commercials: (more…)
Curvin O’Rielly has been kind enough to allow us to publish this article on McNaughton Automotive Perspectives. For those of you who don’t know Curvin, he is one of the most respected copywriters in the advertising business. Among his automotive accomplishments was the creation of the Saturn brand with his colleagues at Hal Riney and Partners. As you will see, Curvin’s perspective on automobile advertising is both timely and timeless.
Everything “Old” Is “New” Again
By Curvin O’Rielly
In 1982, when I was a young creative director at BBDO in New York, I was asked to write an article about the automobile business for Magazine Age.
The article was well received. I even won an American Business Press award for it. The question is, has it stood the test of time?
Well, some of the details I included in the article are as dated as the wide ties we used to wear (the ones you’re saving, hoping they come back into style again), or the disco music we used to listen to (admit it; you boogeyed to disco), or the haul-ass iron we used to drive, the cars with more horsepower than their suspension systems and brakes could reasonably handle (unless they were well-engineered vehicles from Europe).
What’s still true about my article, unfortunately, is that the automobile industry is once again in deep trouble. This time, it’s poised at the abyss, owing in part to the economic tremors that came close to causing a complete meltdown. At the abyss, too, because it was smart (or so it prided itself) but then not smart enough. I mean, surely those at the wheel had to have seen all the danger signs on the road they were heading down, just as they had to have known they were racing toward a disaster of epic proportions.
That said, here are the observations I made 28 years ago, with some minor rewrites here and there.
Who should be embarrassed? The auto industry and their communications agencies.
If you haven’t had a chance to see the documentary “Art & Copy,” you must. Last night I saw it for the second time and enjoyed every minute. If you have worked in the advertising business or are responsible for advertising on the client side it is well worth seeing.
It’s a chance to see some of the most talented people in the agency business talk about what makes great communications. Hal Riney, Mary Lawrence, Jim Durfee, Lee Clow, George Lois, Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein, Dan Wieden and others talk about what they think represents great work and what inspires it. They talk about great ideas: Braniff’s End of the plain plane, Apple’s 1984 and Think Different, Got Milk, Reagan’s re-election campaign, Nike’s Just Do It and VW’s Think Small among others.
At the end, these people and the work leave you inspired. You’re reminded that at its best, advertising can change opinion, entertain, move people emotionally and to action. Great work respects people and treats them decently. Great work can build brands, companies and value. Great work is really hard to create, get approved and execute, but when it all comes together, it can move mountains.
The sentimental favorites won the Super Bowl…at least the football game part.
Generally speaking I thought the advertising game within the game was just OK, not great. Within the automotive segment, six manufacturers stepped up for the Super Bowl:
As I said in an earlier post, the tough part about advertising in the Super Bowl is that while the football game is the primary draw, the advertising contest comes in a close second. As an advertiser you have to be willing to do work that will stand out and entertain because the very next day the “results” of the ad contest will be published in USAToday.
I always watch the Super Bowl hoping that one or more of the automobile manufacturers will break out of the category mold and amaze us. Here’s my take on the automotive commercials, from best to worst: (more…)
There’s an interesting piece in this week’s Adweek by Dean Crutchfield, Chief Engagement Officer at Method: “A Brand by Any Other Name…”
He posits that one of the issues with “branding” as a marketing discipline is that we lack an agreed-to definition, which subjects it to interpretation based on circumstances or agendas. He closes by saying that agencies and marketing services firms need to more tightly define branding:
“If we don’t address this, we could be perceived as an industry made up of people who don’t know how to define what it is they’re not supposed to do. As Grouch Marx would have told us, ‘These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.”
Leaving aside the issue of agency credibility, the automotive industry needs to dedicate itself to building or re-building its brands. Manufacturers who do will succeed in the hyper-competitive “new normal” automotive marketplace, while those who don’t will languish.
The automobile business has traditionally had a shaky relationship with the idea of “branding.” Programs designed to define or position the “brand” are often perceived as the “soft” part of automotive marketing. This perception is in contrast to the marketing specifically designed to drive traffic to the stores or in industry parlance “make the doors swing.” Often manufacturers feel that they have to choose between “branding” and “retail” and more than often than not they choose retail.
I think that part of the problem with the discussion of “branding” in the automobile business is that it most often devolves into a discussion of advertising, as in “this is a brand ad, that is a retail ad.” Brand ads are the ones that attempt to speak to a company’s “values” whereas retail ads feature “product, place and price.” This either/or conversation is specious and has led the industry to it’s current situation, products that are perceived more like commodities and customers who focus on pricing.
Let’s be clear, in the “new normal” automotive market the traditional brand vs. retail discussion is a path to commodity status, decreased sales, decreased profitability and the loss of already weak brand equities. The truth is, every successful automotive competitor will do both jobs, build brand leverage and make the doors swing.
The marketing conversation needs to start in a different place and I agree that it needs to start with a definition of what we mean by “brand.” (more…)
The 2010 Super Bowl may or may not be a good football game, but there will be a whole bunch of automotive commercials to watch. Here are the six manufacturers who will be advertising on this year’s extravaganza:
With 2009 behind us it will be fascinating to watch what each brand does with their piece of the most expensive advertising real estate in the world. The Super Bowl represents an incredible opportunity to reach the biggest television audience of the year. Brands that have used the opportunity well, have in some cases changed their fortunes…Apple’s introduction of the Mac comes to mind:
Here’s the challenge with the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is not just the game that decides the NFL champion, it has become the crucible in which winners and losers are defined in the advertising business. USAToday will not only report who won the game, they rank the advertising gladiators. There’s a lot at stake for the agencies and their clients.
