You may have heard people say “as American as apple pie,” but there may be a new go-to phrase for describing peak Americana: “as American as sleeping in the bed of a Chevrolet Silverado at the Daytona 500.”
That’s the quintessentially American plan that General Motors has laid out for a lucky family of NASCAR fans attending this year’s edition of the Great American Race.
The automaker partnered with the American Cancer Society to reward the deserving family with the experience of camping in the Daytona International Speedway infield and sleeping in specially outfitted 2019 Chevrolet Silverado truck beds.
GM has dubbed this activation and charity effort ‘Hotel Silverado’. In addition to providing a family with a once-in-a-lifetime experiencing, the automaker likely also wanted to display the different ways you can use a Silverado truck bed.
“Leveraging all the available channels — traditional and new — along with unique partnerships and integrations allows us to reach both traditional truck buyers and potential new customers who may be drawn to the versatility and lifestyle that comes with owning a pickup truck,” said Chevrolet US vice president of marketing, Paul Edwards.
The 2019 Chevrolet Silverado will also pace the Daytona 500 this year – the first time the race will have been paced by a pickup truck of any kind. Behind the wheel of the Chevy pace truck, which will have custom Daytona 500 graphics and the necessary pace car lights and signals, will be former NASCAR Cup Series driver and Daytona 500 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr.
The 2019 Daytona 500 will go green on Sunday, February 17th at 2:30 PM ET, thereby kicking off the 2019 NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series and putting an end to the long NASCAR offseason.
Chevy’s marketing campaign for the 2019 Silverado will also begin today when its new ad airs during coverage of the College Football Playoff National Championship, which begins at 8 PM ET.
Comments
How utterly stupid. The World Series MVPs have been gifted Corvettes or Silverados for at least the last few years, and celebrities like Tiger Woods are given GM cars and trucks free of charge. Cancer patients… they’re given the once and a lifetime opportunity to SLEEP in the bed of a Silverado short box pickup.
What makes this even worse is rather than just saying they’re doing all they can for families and a to raise awareness for a great organization, yada yada, the marketing idiot goes on to tout his marketing genius with his “leveraging all the available channels” BS.
Shame on GM and shame on NASCAR for not having anyone there smart enough to question this.
All this right after shuttering how many factories before the holidays? God the jokes could write themselves…
The NASCAR offseason isn’t long enough either, but that’s another comment for another day.
God I could use the edit feature back.
Karma.
i don’t think it is a bad idea. gm will do more than give them a blanket, a six pack and wish them good luck.
for a family who is into nascar, this would be really cool and fun.
the gm marketing guy is just talking like a marketing guy using marketing lingo/terminology. shocking.
this idea is 10x better than giving tiger woods a buick that you know he will never drive.
We have reached peak marketing culture when cancer patients are just one of the “marketing channels”.
It’s time for a Hippocratic Oath for psychologists. Doctors are forced to take the oath and swear they will put patints and medicine first and profits later. Psychs need the same community-wide expectation. If they had, none of them would have been allowed to work for Cambridge Analytica, and today’s President would have been …
John Kasich.
Patients, not patents
I’m a big GM fan, but oh god, I can see it coming….
“You’re out of a job, but hey, you can sleep in your truck right?”
Chevrolet’s ads from the past have been iconic: “See the USA in your Chevrolet”, “Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet”, ” Like A Rock” and so on. They resonated with folks and made the brand feel “part of the family”. It’s good to see Chevy doing something to win back fans and new buyers. Some of the ideas may be strange but at least they are doing something. The “See The USA in your Chevrolet” campaign was from the 50’s but it still carried weight into the 70’s, so much in fact that I thought as a kid it was a new thing! It would be nice to see Chevy do that again! Or maybe haul a Ford up a gravel pile again, just something to bring attention back to them.
It’s been since the 70’s and 80’s since Chevy was a front runner and there’s been a ton of Gen Xer’s and Millenials that has never known anything except Ford and imports.
Boy, those wagon wheels look horrible on that Pace Truck! How did such a stupid trend ever catch fire?