Cadillac’s Oscars Ad Campaign Cost The Equivalent Of 110 2015 Escalade Platinums

ABC charged around $1.95 million for each 30-second commercial spot during its coverage of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, and Cadillac bought four spaces in order to air its new ‘Dare Greatly’ ads. That means General Motors spent over $10 million promoting its luxury brand during the Oscars, enough to buy you 110 Escalade Platinums, just to put it into perspective.

Why did Cadillac have no qualms about forking over beaucoup bucks for its Oscars ads? The brand is looking to entirely reinvent itself and the Oscars were used as a platform to promote its newly formed identity. They could have picked another major televised event, like the Super Bowl for example, however CMO Uwe Ellinghaus felt the Oscars were more relevant and would appeal more to their target demographic.

According to AutoTrader info obtained by Blasting News, the Oscars ads were money well spent for Cadillac. An hour after the ‘Dare Greatly’ spots ran, searches for Cadillac vehicles on AutoTrader had climbed 53 percent, while searches for specific Cadillac vehicles rose 120 percent. This is a particularly notable result, as the ads did not promote any specific Cadillac vehicle.

“The fact that shoppers flocked online to not only the brand, but to both Cadillac sedans as well as utilities suggests the ads did the job of arousing the curiosity of shoppers wondering what’s going on at Cadillac,” Rick Wainschel, vice president of Customer Insights at AutoTrader, told Blasting News.

The ads have also been a hit online, with ‘The Daring: No Regrets’ ad amassing more than 158,000 views in the first 24 hours alone. A spot featuring Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has also managed to rack up well over 1,000,000 views since being posted online on February 22nd. The last Cadillac ad to generate similar attention was the highly controversial ‘Poolside’ spot, and most of it was negative.

Reinventing a brand isn’t cheap, a fact were sure GM knew when it first set out to change the way the car buying public sees Cadillac, but they’re hoping it’s worth it in the end. The next major step in Cadillac’s overhaul will be the introduction of the CT6 flagship sedan at the New York International Auto Show, a move the brand is surely hoping will generate similar interest to ‘Dare Greatly.’