Tag Archives: Chevy Runs Deep

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Is GM Ready to Turn the Corner?

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By Daniel Miller, The Motley Fool

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Detroit’s big three have come a long way since the depths of the recent recession. They’ve improved vehicle quality and management enough for investors like me to root for an American comeback. While consumer perceptions are difficult to turn around, Ford and General Motors have gone to great lengths to convince consumers that domestic vehicles can once again compete. 

That said, in many ways GM still trails behind rival Ford. Its vehicle portfolio is much older, contributing to its market-share losses. The common jab of “Government Motors” highlights the negativity its brand image has battled over the last few years. GM still ranks second in global sales and needs to refresh its vehicles and improve its marketing to become a better investment. Let’s look at a few recent events that might show GM is ready to turn the corner and start fixing its vehicle portfolio and marketing weaknesses.

Enter Mr. Mahoney
Tim Mahoney is Chevrolet’s new global marketing chief. GM hopes he will bring stability and creativity to its often bland marketing strategies. In the past it’s been difficult to create an image that can encompass such a large number of brands and models. The last attempt, “Chevy Runs Deep,” didn’t run very far or very long. It’s remarkable that with the slogan not translating well into other languages, Chevy still represented 54% of GM‘s global sales. Imagine how sales could rise if Chevy finally creates a marketing campaign that consumers can relate with and buy into.

It will be no easy task, as Chevy is about to tackle its wildest vehicle portfolio refresh in the brand’s 102-year history. It will redesign numerous models in the United States this year, including its highly profitable Silverado. The Impala and the buzz-worthy new Corvette will also roll out in new styles. Chevy will then continue its redesigns into early 2014, with the Suburban and Tahoe due to release.

Mahoney’s first job will be to make sure Chevy’s cash cow, the Silverado, is positioned correctly. It has a year’s head start on Ford’s redesigned F-150 and must take advantage of that to secure its market share. Ford and Chrysler both have been touting fuel efficiency, which, in KPMG‘s 2013 survey, is the consumer’s No. 1 factor in purchasing a vehicle. Ford is showing off its popular EcoBoost engine whenever possible, and it’s catching on with consumers. The turbocharged V6 saves fuel while providing equivalent power. GM‘s other rival, Chrysler, has been parading the Dodge Ram in recent commercials as a best-in-class 25 mpg on the highway. Finally, GM has prepared a response to its rivals’ advertisements.

Mahoney is fighting back with a different viewpoint. Rather than arguing fuel efficiency, it says the Chevy Silverado 1500 has the lowest total cost of ownership. That includes transaction prices, operating costs, maintenance, and fuel consumption. It’s the second year in a row it earned the “5-Year Lowest Cost to Own” award. If Chevy can market this idea well, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

Tim Allen May Not Remain Chevrolet's Last Man Standing

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By Dale Buss, Contributor It’s a good thing for Tim Allen that his return to TV comedy in ABC’s Last Man Standing is being so well-received. Because it appears as if the actor’s long-standing and respected gig as the mellifluous voiceover for Chevrolet ads has reached its end. Chevy plans to break the first TV spots under its new “Find New Roads” tag line as early as Super Bowl Sunday, February 3, or even before. And while GM has stuck with its pledge made last spring not to place commercials during the actual Big Game itself, Chevrolet executives clearly are eager to begin to execute against the new brand positioning that is replacing the less-than-effective “Chevy Runs Deep.” Whether new TV ads begin appearing on Super Bowl Sunday “hasn’t been determined yet,” Chris Perry, Chevy’s CMO, told me at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last week. The company said upon unveiling the new slogan earlier this month that creative executions would begin occurring during the first quarter. And “Find New Roads” already is appearing in Chevrolet’s exhibit at the Detroit show as well as on the web site for its new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray that was unveiled at the NAIAS press preview on January 13. As far as Allen — a Michigan native and avowed car nut who also voices the successful “Pure Michigan!” tourism-advertising campaign — is concerned, Perry said, it’s “not definite” whether he’ll return to voice for the new slogan. “It’s that way with any new campaign,” Perry said. Hmm. If Allen is still in the cards for a new “Find New Roads” TV ad that would run, say, on Super Bowl Sunday, that would make for some incredibly quick production work between now and then. Presumably, of course, Chevy made its decision about Allen weeks or months ago and apprised him of it, and new initial ads under the “Find New Roads” campaign, with or without him, already are in the can. In any event, if Allen truly is out as Chevy’s pitchman even though his voice work has been widely lauded as perhaps the best thing about the lame “Chevy Runs Deep” campaign, it would be a clear sign that Chevy wants to get as far away as possible from that positioning. It would be finding a new road indeed.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Automobiles

Chevrolet’s New “Find New Roads” Ad Campaign: We’re Lost [The Ad Section]

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By Don Klein

Chevrolet is about to launch an ad campaign that exemplifies how being slavish to global messaging can result in weak advertising. The goal is no longer to come up with a smart combination of words that will resonate with a national audience; the drill now is to find slogans that will work in every market around the world. These slogans don’t have to be clever or motivating, so long as they don’t lose anything in translation.

Despite seismic shifts in foreign consumers’ acceptance of bold new American products like smartphones and tablets, the prevailing thought for global marketing messaging is apparently to play it safe. And although it’s an urban legend, the story about Chevy’s Nova failing in Latin America because the name means “doesn’t go” in Spanish seems to remain a respected cautionary tale, at least for GM: Better to be innocuous than confusing, or even worse, stupid. And Chevy’s new tag line is most assuredly innocuous. What’s not to like? Nothing. But the real question is, what’s to like? Same answer.

In the past, Chevy has given us campaigns that were uniquely American, from the iconic “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” and “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet” to “An American Revolution” and “Like a Rock.” Even the soon-to-be-departed “Chevy Runs Deep” evoked an emotional, nationalistic response. But times have changed and Americans have learned that Europe and Asia make good cars, too. So, yes, Chevy’s share of domestic market slippage in recent years might well call for fresh creative to go along with the 20 or so new products the brand says it’s bringing to market worldwide in 2013. But if anything, that makes a case for a campaign that’s unique to Chevy—not a theme that’s vague and generic, especially when other global auto marketers are saying essentially the same thing. Toyota’s new campaign is “Let’s Go Places.” Ford’s is “Go Further.” How are they meaningfully different from “Find New Roads?”

2014 Chevrolet Impala

The 2014 Chevrolet Impala, a car Chevy hopes you go find roads in.

In a press release about the new theme, GM says it will “guide every aspect of our business going forward” including design, engineering, and retail operations. In other words, it’s as much a corporate mantra as consumer campaign. As car enthusiasts, do we really care about GM’s internal pep rallies? Don’t we expect the General to keep innovating and improving? Better it should use its annual global ad budget (all $4.5 billion of it) to tell us something about GM cars. For the company’s sake, let’s hope it does, despite the insipid tag line.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Automobiles

Official: Chevrolet introducing "Find New Roads" global tagline

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By Jeffrey N. Ross

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Between the global success of the Chevrolet Cruze and the poorly received “Chevy Runs Deep” tagline, Chevrolet will be aligning all of its marketing behind a new global campaign called “Find New Roads.” Looking at the big picture, Chevrolet says this new tagline will be used to create “one global vision” as it prepares to launch 20 new models this year worldwide, and the US market will be the first to see the new campaign sometime during the first quarter of this year.

More importantly, Chevy says that this tagline will be a crucial element in developing new products and technologies. We’ll wait to see if this means the US will be seeing more global products like we saw with the introduction of Ford’s One Ford plan, but Chevy’s spokesperson Christi Vazquez told us, “We have had success with global products like the Cruze and Sonic/Aveo and will continue to develop products with global markets in mind.”

Read more about the new tagline in the press release posted after the jump.

Continue reading Chevrolet introducing “Find New Roads” global tagline

Chevrolet introducing “Find New Roads” global tagline originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog

Automobiles

‘Chevy Runs Deep’ Finally Deep-Sixed

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By Kurt Ernst

History, we suspect, will not be kind to ad slogans developed by Chevrolet in recent years. While past pitches such as “Like A Rock” were at least evocative, phrases like “An American Revolution” and “We’ll Be There” didn’t do much to conjure up images of cars. While “Excellence For Everyone” had promise, Chevy used it for about 15 minutes before embracing “Chevy Runs Deep.”

To be honest, even we don’t know what that was supposed to mean, and we suspect that “Chevy… Because Wolverine” would have been equally effective. Regardless of our negative opinion (and for the record, an opinion shared by virtually everyone else who writes about cars for a living), GM stuck with the tagline for two years, which is about three years longer than it should have.

Now that former marketing head Joel Ewanick is gone, it’s time for a new slogan, and Chevy’s latest pitch will be “Find New Roads.” It’s no “Like A Rock,” to be sure, and we don’t think it measures up to “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet,” but it’s a giant improvement over “Chevy Runs Deep.”

Mary Barra, Chevy’s senior vice president of global product development, explains the slogan as, “Find New Roads embraces the spirit of ingenuity that has been in Chevrolet’s DNA since the beginning and it will continue to guide every aspect of our business moving forward. We have sold Chevrolets around the world for almost a century, but this is the first time we have aligned behind one global vision.”

As a global rallying slogan, we suppose that could work. Until, of course, someone realizes that the phrase means something entirely unfavorable in another language.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Automotive Addicts

News, Politics, Government

Chevrolet To 'Find New Roads' As It Drops 'Chevy Runs Deep'

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By Dale Buss, Contributor Chevrolet is finally dropping its lackluster “Chevy Runs Deep” slogan and replacing it with a tag line and positioning that brand management believes is broader, more forward-looking, and more timely: “Find New Roads.” The end for “Chevy Runs Deep” had been rumored for awhile, and the slogan will be eulogized just about […]
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest