Forget George Clooney — GM Might Have Been Biggest Loser on Oscars Night
February 27, 2008

By Dale Buss

Actress Jennifer Garner may have felt mugged on the red carpet outside Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre on Sunday night, but at least she was safe once the Oscars telecast began inside.

General Motors enjoyed no such haven after the curtain rose. Abysmal ratings were the company’s reward for its 12th consecutive year as the auto industry’s exclusive national-TV advertising sponsor of the Academy Awards. The Oscars drew the fewest viewers in more than three decades, reaching only about 32 million people, according to Nielsen’s initial calculations.

Presumably, ABC owes GM a lot of make-good ad slots, given the awful ratings and the fact that the automaker and other Oscars sponsors ponied up as much as $1.82 million for each 30-second spot this year, representing as much as a 7 percent increase over last year’s top price of $1.7 million.

“We do have audience guarantees included in our sponsorship agreement with ABC,” said GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney. But she declined to detail exactly what kind of make-goods ABC now owes the carmaker, “for proprietary reasons.”

Deeper Problems
GM certainly was happy with the exposure its “green” vehicles got from transporting many of the celebrities to the red carpet. Host Jon Stewart was one who arrived in a Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell vehicle. And among those pulling up in GMC Yukon Hybrids were last year’s Best Actor, Forest Whitaker; 2007’s Best Actress, Helen Mirren; Jessica Alba — and Garner.

Once on the carpet and on her way into the show, Garner was enthusiastically and severely pecked on the face and neck by an actor she apparently didn’t recognize, Gary Busey — and then she got flustered in front of the cameras. In terms of the awards, perhaps the biggest surprise was George Clooney didn’t win the Best Actor award for his role in Michael Clayton.

But overall, GM was one of the night’s biggest losers, with ABC in tow. And the Oscars’ woes as a marketing property go beyond the mere amount of commercial time ABC is now in arrears to GM. There were several dimensions to Sunday’s debacle.

First is the glittery awards show simply is losing its predictability as compelling programming. Sunday’s Oscars had two problems in that regard, which surely contributed to the awful ratings.

One hurdle, of course, was the TV writers’ strike ended only a couple of weeks ago, meaning this important program had to be thrown together. Another, more fundamental, problem, however, was Sunday’s broadcast became the deepest expression yet of Hollywood’s chronic compulsion to reward mainly its darkest and most outré impulses. Most of the big nominated movies and performances were depressing, and relatively few Americans even went to the theater to see them.

This Is a Premier Property?
The second problematic aspect of this year’s Oscars is it tarnished one of the few remaining premier network-television advertising vehicles brand marketers count upon.

Fortunately for GM and other automotive advertisers, as well as the networks, the Super Bowl earlier this month proved, by contrast, a huge success. Fox Network charged GM, Ford, Toyota, Audi and Hyundai — the automakers who paid for TV ads during the game — a record $2.7 million for each 30-second slot. But helped by a classic game on the field, the broadcast garnered about 97.5 million viewers, making it the most watched Super Bowl ever. And several automakers and their products enjoyed great buzz online and in showrooms afterward.

But the consequences of a truly bad night such as Sunday are growing for GM and other major brand marketers because, increasingly, the bulk of what they buy in network TV anymore is largely premier properties such as the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the Grammy Awards.

For its part, GM was playing the role of a good sport. Of course the company would like to have seen better ratings, Carney said. But “the [Academy Awards] ratings ebb and flow based on a variety of factors,” she said. “Even in years when the ratings come in a bit lower than in past years, the Oscar telecast gives us the opportunity to reach more than 30 million people in one evening with our messages.”

Broadcast Blues
The ineffectiveness on display Sunday night also could prove another significant blow to network-TV advertising in general, given the roster of disappointed blue-chip clients that also included Coca-Cola, Unilever and American Express.

Many in the marketing business were watching the Oscars telecast for general signs of the health of broadcast-TV advertising in the wake of the three-month writers’ strike, the resulting scrambling of the first-quarter programming schedule, tighter overall marketing budgets because of the slowing economy, and the further rise of competing media such as the Internet.

GM completed its biggest shift into digital media, and away from network TV and other traditional outlets, in 2006. But it is still pumping yet more resources into online advertising, which also is the recipient of much of its most innovative work these days. The launch of the new Chevrolet Malibu sedan is the latest illustration of that.

Still, Carney insisted, “We … see an important role for network TV in our media plans.”

Posted by Michelle Krebs at 5:45 PM under Business , Companies , GM | Comments (3) | digg this | Seed Newsvine