Starting September 7, we will begin seeing ads for the all-new Chevrolet Cruze. Four of the 30-second spots will be voiced by the very recognizable tone of Tim Allen.

Best known for his starring roles on the show Home Improvement as well as the Toy Story movies, voicing Buzz Lightyear, Allen could possibly steal the spotlight from the cars. According GM’s vice president of marketing Joel Ewanick, however, the stars of the ads will still be the cars.

Allen, who grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, is a well known automotive enthusiast who happens to be a Western Michigan University alum.

Will Allen also narrate the upcoming Chevrolet Superbowl ads? Only time will tell…

In other news, Howie Long is still missing.

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The Saturn-badged Opel Astra was a cool little car that was fun and economical at the same time – a combination that has become quite rare nowadays. Nevertheless, this particular writer hopes that Chevrolet will make a three-door hatchback version of the Cruze five-door that will get its official debut in Paris. Anyone else hoping for a three-door Cruze?

The minute-long clip asks what you can do in 7 minutes, 59 seconds, and 32 one-hundredths. Of course, that’s the amount of time it took the mighty CTS-V sedan to lap the legendary Nürburgring, bestowing on the LSA-powered Caddy the title of the fastest production sedan on the planet.

The ad also gives credit where credit is due, mentioning the BMW M5 and Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG as vehicles that inspired Cadillac to engineer the CTS-V. The commercial closes with Caddy’s all-new tagline – The New Standard Of The World.

In North America, we know Opel in such vehicles as the Cadillac Catera, Saturn Aura, and Buick Regal. However, none of these products actually wear the Opel badge in their respective export markets. As such, it comes as a surprise that GM is looking to expand the Opel brand to international markets all over the world.
Currently, Opel is one of The General’s brands that has very little exposure outside of Europe. Earlier last year, GM tested Opel in the Chinese market by offering a limited range of Opel models, including the (old) Astra sedan and hatchback, Zafira, and Antara. The trial run moved 4,000 cars and contributed to GM’s decision to initiate a full-scale launch of Opel in China. The General hopes to position Opel as a premium European brand in the burgeoning country, joning the already-successful Buick brand.

Over the last few years, the Chinese auto market has been on a tremendous upswing, with a sizable amount of consumers attaining the ability to afford a premium vehicle. At this point, it is unclear how Opel will overlap with Buick in China and whether the two brands will offer the same vehicles with different badges (Opel Insignia and Buick Regal, Opel Astra and Buick Excelle). Needless to say, the GM Authority crew certainly hopes that GM isn’t up to its old tricks of badge engineering all over again.

In addition to China, GM is looking to bring Opel into Australia and various markets in the Asia-Pacific and South American regions. It’s currently unknown whether North America is a candidate for the European brand, but given GM’s decision to send Pontiac and Saturn to the automotive graveyard last year, we find it highly unlikely.

[Source: Left Lane News]

2011 Opel Insignia

2011 Buick Regal – GM Authority First Drive

For decades, this has been a popular bumper sticker among Chevy owners

Due to launch in October, GM will make light of the fact that – for ages – customers have put bumper stickers on their Chevys with a child urinating on the Ford logo (and vice versa).

Ewanick said the ads would use “interesting, creative and funny ways to take advantage of the fact that there’s really the Hatfields and McCoys.” He also said that the campaign will span television, print as well as online media and admitted that the theme’s inspiration was the gatherings of his own family where members would give one another a hard time about their rival truck brands.

Ewanick was the head of marketing at Hyundai Motor America for three years before coming to Nissan and staying there from March through May 2010. He arrived at GM about three months ago and has been impressing upon his new employees that the relationship between the truck owner and his/her truck brand should be used in campaigns.

Howie Long, the longtime Chevrolet spokesperson and former NFL defensive lineman, will not be in the ads. The commercials will instead feature another well-known personality.

These will be the last series of ads to be done by Campbell-Ewald, which is being replaced by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco as Chevy’s ad agency of record.

Even though sales of passenger cars have been on a downturn in recent years, the Detroit Three still command 81.8 percent of the pickup truck market. This is an increase of a half percent since the same period last year. Silverado sales have increased by 13 percent since July 2009 and Ford’s F-Series trucks were up 35 percent. The American car market improved by 15 percent as a whole over the first 7 months of 2010 compared to the same period of time in 2009.

[Source: Adage]

“Consumers don’t buy General Motors. General Motors sells nothing.”

Those are the words of General Motors vice president of U.S. marketing Joel Ewanick, and they speak directly to the overall direction in which he is taking The General’s marketing department. Ewanick’s current focus is to build up the prestige and quality that lies within the Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC brands instead of boasting that there’s a big sale every month to clear inventory.

“We’re moving sheet metal instead of telling our story. We’ve got to get back to telling our story. What do we want to tell people about Chevrolet?”

Ewanick’s plan is to have each GM brand tell a story of its own, establishing a clear-cut identity for each marque. He uses the example of him watching auto auctions on TV, explaining that TV auctions bring out an emotional connection for a specific brand of a vehicle.

“We’re going to remind you from time to time that we’re part of the fabric of society,” Ewanick said.

The first brand to undergo this change is Chevrolet. In the last 13 months, Chevrolet has gone through three marketing directors. The latest is Chris Perry, Ewanick’s right hand man at Hyundai. Ewanick is staying quiet on what his plans entail for Chevrolet, but expect the Camaro, Equinox and Chevrolet’s Chevy nicknane to be featured.

Ewanick also said that he will bring in new people to help get the message out:

“My boss, Mark Reuss, asked me to bring people into the organization that will challenge the way we look at things.”

That makes us wonder who else will join GM’s marketing team in the coming months.

The GM Authority Take

We would like to applaud Joel Ewanick for nailing the one thing that the GM Authority crew has been criticizing for quite some time. That one thing is the lack of brand identity.

If you walked up to someone and asked what Cadillac’s identity was, you might get different answers. Ask the same person what BMW represents as a brand and you’ll most likely hear something along the lines of “the ultimate driving machine”. It’s good to see someone within GM taking the reins of the marketing department. The question now is what will happen and will they succeed. Only time will tell…

[Source: Automotive News, AutoObserver]

The "Mark Of Leadership" slogan is on its way out, but what will replace it?

Joel Ewanick is proving to be quite the mover and shaker. Since his recruitment at GM this past May, he has been working on hitting the restart button on the entire marketing strategy for each General Motors brand. For example, when Ewanick shifted Cadillac’s $270 million account from the esteemed British ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty to Minnesota-based Fallon in July, he made a statement of the change that would certainly not stop there. Currently, Fallon is busy with launching an all-new campaign for Cadillac. But it already has the new slogan in place: “The New Standard For The World”.

The new slogan pays direct homage to the classic Cadillac “Standard Of The World” tagline that the brand has become accustomed to.  Ewanick would not mention just how different the new Cadillac ads will be from the clips created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty. If you’re wondering on just what makes Fallon the ideal advertising agency, consider the following quote from Ewanick:

“We picked an agency like Fallon because Fallon has 17 years of luxury-car experience. There’s not an agency in America that has 17 years of luxury-car experience in the United States. Look it up. They had 10 years with BMW and six-and-a-half, seven years with Porsche — some of that with me… so I know what they’re good at, I know what they’re strengths and weaknesses are, and Pat Fallon is a great advertising person.”

[Source: Automotive News]

According to Automotive News, Joel Ewanick, The General’s U.S. Vice President of Marketing, plans on spearheading the mission of promoting Chevy’s new products. He has taken measures to recruit an all new ad agency that has taken steps to develop a new slogan.

“Yes, we will be in the Super Bowl, I won’t tell you how much or what we’re doing, but I will tell you it will all be about Chevrolet.”

Conveniently, the Super Bowl takes place just after the debut of two critically vital Chevy models here in North America: the Cruze global compact and the Volt plug-in Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV). However, Ewanick did not comment on just which models will be featured in the Super Bowl Ads (or if Howie Long will accompany them). It is still safe to bet that GM wants to market these new vehicles as much as possible and – if the timing is right- it may want to include the all-new 2012 Aveo as well.

The agency now in charge of Chevy’s $600 million account is the San Fransisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners rather than Publicis Worldwide, which operates out of Paris, France. Ewanick made the switch just this past May, negating the decision to give the account to Publicis made by Susan Docherty, who has moved on to GM International.

Oh, and “Excellence For Everyone” (or “Everyone Deserves Excellence”) is out the window, as Ewanick wittingly states:

“‘Excellence for all’ — it’s a great title for Stephen Covey’s next book. It’s also something I could find on every one of our competitors and one that I could put on every airline and everything else,” he said. “It’s not specific to who we are and where we’re taking Chevrolet, and I thought that was important. We took a step back and said, ‘What do we have? We have a soul.’ People have deep feelings and passion about that.”

Lastly, the Chevy Camaro will have its own advertising campaign debut in September. Ewanick added that GM plans on pushing the bow tie pony car to elevate the brand and show that Chevy is more than just a docile lineup of Toyota-fighting sedans. Take that, Toyota.

[Source: Automotive News]

What’s interesting is that this ad was made by the same organization that’s in the process of producing the campaign for the Cadillac CTS-V and its absolute dominance of the Nurburgring.

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