General Motors’ ads just aren’t getting the job done.
Since the company left bankruptcy three years ago, its ads haven’t boosted sales much. The company’s biggest campaign, “Chevy Runs Deep,” has failed to generate buzz. And now, GM has forced out its star marketing chief just as it launches two key vehicles.
The lackluster ads and loss of marketing head Joel Ewanick raise doubts about GM’s ability to improve sales longer term. Experts say that even though it’s making better cars and trucks, advertising has failed to get the message across. Despite spending upwards of $4 billion a year on marketing, GM hasn’t been able to dent the perception that other brands are better.
“GM continues to have an image problem, which really isn’t fair because their products are vastly improved,” says Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with IHS Automotive, an industry consulting firm.
GM’s U.S. sales rose just 4 percent in the first half of the year, lagging the 15-percent gain for the industry. The growth is paltry compared with increases of more than 30 percent at brands like Volkswagen and Chrysler. Sales at two GM brands, Cadillac and Buick, have fallen, and GM’s share of the U.S. market has dropped almost two points in the past year to 18.1 percent.
“Nothing from a pure advertising point of view popped,” says Larry Dominique, Executive Vice President of the TrueCar.com auto pricing site and a former Nissan product planning executive.
GM’s July sales, due out Wednesday, are expected to be stagnant. And analysts predict its second-quarter earnings will show a decline when they’re announced on Thursday.
The results aren’t what GM expected when it poached the industry’s hottest marketer from Nissan in 2010.
Ewanick was an industry standout. He burnished his reputation during a brilliant stint at Hyundai. The company’s U.S. market share leaped from 2.7 percent to 4.4 percent during his three years there. During the peak of the financial crisis in 2009, he rolled out a program that allowed buyers to return their cars if they lost their jobs.
For months, everyone at GM waited for Ewanick to bring the same magic to GM. But the big idea never came. Instead, “Chevy Runs Deep,” the campaign that tied Chevrolet to a century of American history, didn’t catch on. Ewanick even had doubts. He reviewed the campaign, but said last spring that GM research found it was helping the brand’s image.
The number of people looking into buying Chevrolets on the Edmunds.com automotive site actually fell from the campaign’s start in October of 2010 to June of this year.
Instead of flashbacks to vintage Chevys and sentimental stories about soldiers returning home, the ads should have emphasized GM’s improved cars and trucks, says Charles R. Taylor, a marketing professor at the Villanova University School of Business.
“The idea that many consumers are going to buy it simply based on the heritage is misguided,” he says. “You really need to give the consumer a reason to buy the product beyond just long-term brand loyalty.”
The campaign’s tagline never matched the buzz created by old Chevy campaigns going back to the 1950s, such as “See the USA in your Chevrolet” sung by Dinah Shore, or more recently, Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” that epitomized the ruggedness of Chevy pickups.
GM also couldn’t touch Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” campaign. The ads were part sales pitch, part rallying cry for a beleaguered Detroit, and they quickly became an Internet hit after the 2011 Super Bowl. Detroit rapper Eminem, who appeared in one of the spots, helped re-instill civic pride. The ads lasted for months after the spots aired.
“Young people started to tweet ‘Imported From Detroit,'” Taylor says.
The ads carry the message that Chrysler is back from disaster and building better cars that are cooler than imports, something the GM ads lack, Taylor says.
Some of GM’s ads have shown flashes of genius. During this year’s Super Bowl, a Chevy ad showed a graduate ecstatic over his parents buying him a convertible Camaro. The car, it turned out, belonged to a neighbor. And the graduate’s real gift was a small refrigerator.
The buzz around the ad faded after the game, and the ad didn’t give anyone a reason to buy a Camaro, Taylor says.
“Our ads have a strong story to tell about one of GM’s best product lineups in its history,” spokesman Greg Martin says.
The campaigns weren’t the reason for Ewanick’s departure, nor were his decisions to yank ads from Facebook and pull out of next year’s Super Bowl, GM has said. The company will say only that he didn’t meet expectations.
But a person with knowledge of the matter says GM’s upper management was surprised by the price tag of up to $600 million for putting Chevrolet’s logo on Britain’s Manchester United soccer team jerseys.
Ewanick wouldn’t comment on Tuesday.
Now GM is looking for its fifth marketing chief in a little over three years. The timing is bad, as GM is launching new versions of two top-selling vehicles, the Chevrolet Malibu midsize sedan this summer and the Silverado pickup truck next year.
And the jury is still out on Ewanick’s stint at GM because it takes a lot of time to measure the effect of car ads, Dominique says.
“Some people would argue that there hasn’t been enough time,” he says. “But this is an impatient industry.”
By Tom Krisher, Auto Writer
AD&Co. Launches Studio A; Davida Hall To Head New Venture As Sr. Director of Creative Content
Female-founded and led creative marketing agency AD&Co. has opened Studio A. The new venture will serve as AD&Co.โs in-house social brand content division, focused on developing and producing digital programming for advertising, social media, and influencer marketing campaigns designed to reach todayโs audiences on the most popular and pivotal platforms. Davida Hall has been named to head Studio A as sr. director of creative content. She shifts over from AD&Co. where she held the same title since December 2023. Hallโs affiliations prior to AD&Co. include PopSugar and Studio71.
Amy Demas, founder and chief creative officer of AD&Co., said, โWe understand content is king-โor queenโand that our clients need to engage their customer communities where they live. That inspired the logical expansion of AD&Co with Studio A, which is committed to producing only the most engaging and authentic brand stories.โ
Studio A will harness both AD&Coโs and Hallโs deep expertise in the lifestyle sector, as content creators and avid consumers. Specializing in reaching audiences where they spend their time, the studio is immersed in social media, pop culture, and current trends, expertly crafting visuals, language, and storytelling to reinforce client brand identities and cut through the noise.
Studio A debuts with the โThis Is Meโ campaign for Love + Craft + Beauty, a brand dedicated to embracing and promoting diversity within the beauty space. โThis Is Meโ highlights Gen Zโs affinity for radical self-expression that allows individuals to tell their own stories, free from labels, using beauty and fashion as tools of authenticity. The campaign showcases models celebrating their unique qualities to present... Read More