GM Refocuses, Streamlines Advertising Effort

DETROIT, Sept 16 Reuters reported that with more than 10,000 car commercials beamed to American households every week, even General Motors Corp., the largest advertiser in the United States, is worried about breaking through the clutter.

The world's largest automaker, which spent an estimated $2.14 billion on advertising and marketing in the United States last year according to CMR/TSN, has focused its message and streamlined the process to approve ads, said CJ Fraleigh, GM's executive director of advertising and corporate marketing.

"We're trying to get all of our advertising to break through the unbelievable clutter that's out there and focus on a core idea," Fraleigh, hired by GM from PepsiCo Inc. <PEP.N> in January 2001, told Reuters in an interview. "We want to make sure that people have a clear idea of what Cadillac and Hummer and Chevy and every one of our divisions stands for."

This week, GM will unveil three new advertising campaigns -- for its Buick and Pontiac divisions and for General Motors as a whole -- that it hopes will change impressions for the better.

Critics of GM's advertising efforts over the past few years have contended that many of GM's vehicle divisions have sent muddled messages. Often, that was due to bland or poorly produced vehicles that failed to deliver on the promises that the ads parlayed, they said.

"What they've always lacked is a clear position with each brand. Once upon a time they had it, and they let it get away," said Jack Trout, a marketing strategist at the helm of Trout & Partners.

Until recently, GM had more than 50 brand managers that were in charge of approving the ads, part of its much criticized "brand management" philosophy of promoting individual car and truck models rather than a vehicle division.

But with a reorganization of the vehicle development system announced earlier this year, just seven advertising directors working for each vehicle division, such as Cadillac, Chevrolet or Buick, are responsible for the ads, Fraleigh said.

"When you take a couple of billion dollars and split it up 50 different ways, you're not going to get as much impact as if you would take that same money and split it up seven ways," he said.

GM also dropped extensive testing requirements for each advertising campaign, which Fraleigh described as "a huge burden" that could hurt the creative process.

The renewed focus has appeared to pay dividends. After the Sept. 11 attacks last year, GM responded with a simple, zero-percent financing offer that consumers easily grasped.

The incentives, which have reappeared several times since, led to record U.S. vehicle sales last October, and have boosted GM's U.S. market share this year.

Some of GM's more recent ad campaigns have also received strong praise, even from some of the automaker's harshest critics. Bob Garfield, a columnist with Advertising Age, recently called GM's Saturn division the "brown shoe of the American automobile industry."

But he described Saturn's new brand campaign as a "a work of genuine genius." The ads, created by Omnicom Group Inc.'s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, show commuters headed to work and kids going to school, all shuffling down streets without cars.

Ads for Cadillac, set to the Led Zeppelin song "Rock and Roll," have also injected some excitement into the struggling luxury vehicle brand.

"No one can miss the fact that Cadillac is at least coming to life," Mark DiMassimo, the head of the independent advertising agency DiMassimo Brand Advertising. "Cadillac was looking like a dead brand. Suddenly, Cadillac advertising is surprising."

But Fraleigh conceded there would be missteps. Both the new Pontiac and Buick advertisements that debut this week replace short-lived campaigns that failed.

"I think every one of our divisional campaigns have taken a step forward from where they've been," he said. "There's still significant upside to getting to our ultimate goal of being the best advertiser in the world."