Auto Companies Pass on Super Bowl
November 09, 2007

By Dale Buss

Now that the “regular-season super bowl” is over -- with the New England Patriots’ defeat of the Indianapolis Colts last Sunday -- football advertisers as well as fans are turning more attention to the official Super Bowl XLII on February 3.

And despite the fact that Fox already has sold out more than 90 percent of its commercial spots for the game broadcast, automakers aren’t among the major advertisers clamoring to get in.

In fact, General Motors and its divisions have decided to cut the company’s total number of in-game TV advertisements down to just one, compared with three during the 2007 Super Bowl, AutoObserver has learned. Honda has decided for the first time in four years to bow out of running spots during the Super Bowl telecast itself. And Chrysler seems likely, just as last year, to stay away from the game telecast itself.

“I’m a little less hot on the Super Bowl lately,” Deborah Meyer, Chrysler’s chief marketing officer, told AutoObserver in a phone interview. “It can be an interesting place to be if it matches very tactical, or launch, strategies. But it has lost a little bit of its luster overall, as does anything that’s been focused on or overused.” Still, Meyer noted that Chrysler hadn’t yet decided its “final strategy” on ad placement during the Super Bowl.

Other automakers either are standing pat, haven’t decided for sure about their Super Bowl plans, or aren’t talking.

GM, Honda: Less Playing Time

Both GM and Honda maintain that their reduced participation in Super Bowl ads reflects tactical decisions rather than any strategic deemphasis of the long-term importance of the global marketing phenomenon that is expected to reach more than 90 million people.

Honda simply doesn’t plan a new product launch or has ready “a major message” whose timing could take advantage of Super Bowl XLII, said Tom Peyton, senior marketing manager for national advertising.

Last year, Honda’s most memorable ad was an ode to Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” and the automaker’s redesigned CR-V; the company also bought a spot touting the overall fuel efficiency of its fleet. That followed a 2006 spot in which Honda bragged about its Ridgeline being named Motor Trend’s Truck of the Year and a 2005 commercial that introduced Ridgeline.

“It’s still an outstanding [advertising] vehicle if you’ve got a Super Bowl-worthy message, or a new product launch,” Peyton said. “It’s still the best vehicle you can use to get broad awareness and immediacy. And it drives a lot of Web traffic and creates a lot of additional impressions. Not too many other properties have that.

“But we just don’t feel we have a message befitting the Super Bowl,” he added. “The only thing that would change our plans is a last-minute fire sale” on ad space.

GM marketers recognized a similar reality in making their recent decision to drop to one Super Bowl spot from three. “None of our vehicle launches is taking place around then,” spokeswoman Ryndee Carney noted. “That’s what we always do with our decision: We’re always balancing our business need at any given time with opportunities to purchase media.”

Mark LaNeve, GM North America vice president for vehicle sales, service and marketing, added that the Super Bowl remains “a great venue” especially if it coincides with a launch or major corporate program as last year for GM. “But I don’t want our ego to get in the way, saying, ‘We’ve got to be in the game.’ It’s expensive, and those ads are very highly scrutinized.”

The company’s single in-game spot will be a 60-second Chevrolet ad, but the division hasn’t decided exactly what it will promote with it, Carney said. Chevrolet also will have a “strong presence” through its official sponsorship of Super Bowl week and activities, LaNeve noted. In any event, right now, Chevrolet marketers are focused on pulling out all the stops promoting the launch of their all-new Malibu compact.

In Super Bowl XLI, Chevrolet purchased two spots. One was the memorable ad featuring men in various stages of “beefcake” undress washing an HHR -- a spot that was conceived by college students whose idea ended up winning a contest under which Chevy produced the ad. Chevrolet also ran an “anthem” spot with celebrities including Mary J. Blige and Dale Earnhart Jr. singing songs with “Chevy” in the lyrics.

And, of course, during the 2007 Super Bowl, GM paid for an infamous corporate ad that promoted its new 100,000-mile warranty program with a suicidal robot. Anti-suicide groups ranted that GM’s ad was insensitive to actual humans with real suicidal thoughts.

Meanwhile, Cadillac plans a significant enhancement of its marketing partnership with the Super Bowl post-game, including its long-running sponsorship of the contest’s Most Valuable Player Award. Last year, Colts Quarterback Peyton Manning received a Cadillac Escalade in an on-field ceremony after the game.

But in determining to gain better leverage from its MVP sponsorship and its overall status as an official sponsor of Super Bowl week in the host city –- Phoenix, this time -– Cadillac decided to extend its marketing presence forward in time to the National Football League playoffs in January as well.

“We wanted to help ‘pay off’ our Super Bowl MVP involvement and the NFL’s association with Cadillac, so the first time that you hear about it no longer will be at the end of the Super Bowl,” explained Liz Vanzura, Cadillac’s global marketing director. “We figured, ‘Why not engage people earlier?’”

So, Cadillac plans to sponsor in-game “vignettes” that will be produced and shown on the fly during each of Fox’s last four playoff games before the Super Bowl, featuring National Football Conference teams. They will be called “Cadillac MVP Moments,” produced by both Cadillac and the National Football League, and be integrated into the telecast as well as available afterward online.

“Online and digital-space connections with [the Super Bowl] are no-brainers,” Vanzura said. “But we haven’t explored them before. We’ll take a more active role in that this year.”

Cadillac also wants to use its playoff-game advertising to promote the fact that one of the factors determining who is the Super Bowl MVP is fans’ online balloting during the game. “We think consumers are very interested in engaging in things beyond what you see on TV so they can get deeper into this,” Vanzura said.

Moreover, Cadillac bought brand placement on the home page of YouTube.com for right after the Super Bowl –- the spot where millions of consumers are expected to go for reprise viewing of Super Bowl advertisements. And again this year it will be involved in a “360-degree” Super Bowl marketing partnership with Sports Illustrated magazine and the SI.com Web site, including co-hosting a big party in Phoenix the week before the game.

“We feel with all of this we’re doing a good job of capitalizing on the momentum around the game,” Vanzura said. “Whether we go in the game or not, we’re still a really big part of it.”

Ford: Plans Up in the Air

In February, Ford, which is just now bringing former Toyota marketing exec, Jim Farley, on board to run its sales and marketing,  “probably” will continue to advertise adjacent rather than during the Super Bowl game –- only in its case, pre-kickoff instead of post-game, according to George Rogers, president and CEO of Team Detroit, the joint venture that includes all Ford advertising agencies.

While the company hasn’t disclosed its specific plans, expect Ford very much to follow in the tradition  of pre-kick ads such as the 2007 spot featuring its F-Series Super Duty truck, its 2006 Ford Mustang “Field of Dreams” ad featuring a digitally resurrected Steve McQueen, and its 2005 Super Bowl commercial featuring the GT as “the pace car for an entire company.”

Ford’s last in-game Super Bowl ad was 2006, when Kermit the Frog sang “It’s Easy Being Green” in adulation of the Ford Escape Hybrid. “That ad,” Rogers noted, “turned out to be the single most effective single TV spot in all of 2006.”

Similarly, Toyota has not revealed its plans for Super Bowl advertising. Last Super Bowl, Toyota used the event to launch its brand new Tundra pickup truck.

Bridgestone: In the Game

Other automotive brands, however, still cherish being “in the game.” Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire, for example, has just announced that the Bridgestone brand will be the title sponsor of the high-profile halftime shows of both Super Bowl XLII and XLIII. Bridgestone will launch two new 30-second commercials during the game as well.

Apparently, the tire supplier believed that the Super Bowl halftime show was far-enough removed from Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII and that the NFL and television censors have put in enough safeguards to avoid such potential embarrassment again.

Posted by Michelle Krebs at 7:08 AM under Chrysler , Ford , GM , Toyota | Comments (0) | digg this | Seed Newsvine