Category: Advertising

GM Auto Marketing: Find Your Style (Wife, Girlfriend, Mistress)

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Driving back to SFO recently, I noticed this GM (General Motors) billboard. In essence, the message to Northern California drivers bound either for SFO or their jobs on the Peninsula or in Silicon Valley was:

Advertising is often a useful way to peer into the soul of a company, or in other words, think about their dna and how the firm views its interaction with the outside world.

This campaign smells desperate to me. I’m reminded of Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy’s spot on statement regarding software: “The quality of a company’s software has an inverse relationship to the amount spent on marketing.”

I must admit that this ad campaign doesn’t click at all for me, from any angle. The whole pitch, including the website, seems like a lot of fluff. I visited the site and it promptly crashed my computer (PC, in this case). I tried again and it worked, although it later crashed just my browser.

Perhaps this all makes sense for some car buyers…..

I think GM would be much better off seeding cars to bloggers and schools for long term reviews (with the agreement that they write about their year or two with a sedan, minivan, SUV or sports car). This will take some doing, but I think it would be money well spent. Essentially, they need to route around the legacy media (see Bob Lutz’s notes on this).

iPods and personal mixes cut into radio time

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iPods, personal mixes and to a lesser degree satellite radio are evidently cutting into traditional radio listeners time tuned in. I actually think that most radio stations have become ad vehicles rather than creative outlets. For example, I used to listen to 105.5 (triple m in Madison) rather frequently. However, the past two years, I listen to our fine student station 91.7, WSUM and my iPod. 105.5 has no shortage of commercials and a reasonably predictable playlist (they do offer up new music periodically).
The best station, hands down is Fordhams WFUV, available via mp3 stream.
Michael Booth says that Denver stations are trying to change…..

Advertising: Things are changing

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Lots of data around to show that all organizations must consider where and how they spend their marketing and advertising dollars:

The Persuaders

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Frontline (watch it online):

Americans are swimming in a sea of messages.
Each year, legions of ad people, copywriters, market researchers, pollsters, consultants, and even linguists?most of whom work for one of six giant companies?spend billions of dollars and millions of man-hours trying to determine how to persuade consumers what to buy, whom to trust, and what to think. Increasingly, these techniques are migrating to the high-stakes arena of politics, shaping policy and influencing how Americans choose their leaders.

This is an interesting example: I recently posted a few comments on Pepsi Spice It looks to me like Pepsi’s ad agencies are attempting to run a viral marketing campaign using search engines. I could be wrong but find it hard to believe that customers are flocking to search engines looking for Pepsi Spice information….