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Bolton, Burgundy and Cheeky Buzz – Auto Marketers Set a New Tone

Nader Ashway4 Comments

If you’ve seen the recent round of spots (they ran throughout the fourth quarter of 2013) for Dodge Durango featuring the fictional character Ron Burgundy, you know how good they are.  Crazy good.  (Kudos to Wieden & Kennedy.) They’re stupid funny, with an offbeat wit that perhaps only Will Ferrell could channel in this character composite, a mashup of 70-‘s into 80’s d-list celebrity relics.

Here’s just one of the many spots that were filmed (likely loosely scripted and then ad-the-hell-libbed-out-of by Ferrell) for the campaign:

What’s more intriguing, of course, is that the spots were wildly effective.  According to this article in Autoblog, Durango’s sales were up a staggering 59% in the first month of the campaign. Similarly, after three months of leadup, (the Durango spots were a marketing tie-up to promote the movie inasmuch as they were car ads,) the movie – who some have said didn’t live up to the hype – has raked in more than $108 million dollars at the box office (as of the weekend ending January 5, 2014) against a $50 million production budget.  That’s a profit, yo.  And it might have something to do with the more than 20 million views the spots have received on YouTube.

In a strange coincidence, another auto marketer (Honda) aligned with its own interesting character to help bolster holiday sales.  In the fourth quarter of 2013, Honda ran a campaign of spots under the “Happy Honda Days” theme featuring Michael Bolton, a bit of caricature himself, something of a mashup of 80’s/90’s pop stardom realism.

In the spots, the VO asks, “what does it feel like to get a great deal at Happy Honda Days?  Cue the Bolton.”  (Cheeky, right? Ri-ight?)  And then Bolton appears, singing wintry feel-good lyrics, like “Spread some cheer, the holidays are here…” and “now that the snow is falling down baby, my love is calling your name…” and the more heavy-handed “It’s a winter wonderland, and the snow is gonna blow.”

Take a look:

All these songs were written specifically for the spots…and they’re goofy, but with a deceptively catchy feel that’s very, well, Bolton.  That’s pretty neat.

But what’s really neat (and perhaps where Honda has out-cheeked Dodge in this strategy,) is the social component that’s wrapped into the spots.  Here’s how the program worked.  In late November, there was a 5-day window when people could message their friends via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Vine using a hashtag #XOXOBolton.  Here’s “The Bolton” setting the stage himself:

Then a bunch of lucky winners did indeed get personalized songs from Bolton, and THOSE were really funny too: Check one out, delivered to the difficult-to-pronounce Erdle:

So, major props to Rubin Postaer (sorry, now known as RPA) for taking a good idea and going a few really creative steps further.

In comparing these two campaigns, (Dodge and Honda,) how would you crown a winner?  Is it the quality of the idea?  The production value?  Or the reach?  Dodge and Ron Burgundy rode a wave of laughter all the way to the bank, (for both brands, it turns out.) Honda went the whole way, integrated the celebrity endorsement (and really carried the joke through) in a rich and fun social media activation.

Honda wins on extending the activation and driving engagement.

But at the end of the day, we have a job to do.  And in this inter-office smackdown, Burgundy and Durango win hands down for moving the needle way over into the profit redline.

So…who’s next on the cheeky auto endorsements?  How about Alice Cooper and Verne Troyer for Mini Cooper?  Huh?  Whaddayasay?

Just spitballing here.

Super Bowl Advertising on AUTO-Pilot?

Nader AshwayLeave a comment


For the most part, the super bowl spots this year were, well, less than super. No really big ideas. No breaking of any molds. No we’ll-be-talking-about-this-in-20-years executions. It’s not that they were bad. They just weren’t memorable. And in the world of advertising, if you can’t do memorable, you can’t do anything.

Let’s spare the knocks and gaffes. We all know what those were. (A kid peeing in a pool for a free online tax service? Really?) Instead, I’ll focus on the few standouts in the automotive category and see if we can highlight some themes to remember if and when you ever have the chance to put your brand on the grandest stage of all.

For my money, GM wins the night with their “2012” post-apocalyptic survival spot for Silverado. A Silverado pulls out of the gray rubble of the aftermath with every cliché in tow: a rugged middle-aged man, his trusty dog and, of course, Barry Manilow crooning “Looks Like We Made It.” Even the Transformers (yup, that’s Bumblebee’s head laying on the side of the road,) and the alien ships couldn’t outwit the Mayan foreshadowing. But Silverado did.

And in the gutsiest move of the night, GM takes on the competition by name. The main character meets up with three other Silverado drivers and asks, “Where’s Dave?” A saddened friend reports the dreary news: “Dave didn’t drive the longest-lasting, most dependable truck on the road…Dave drove a Ford.” Home run. Say goodnight Gracie. That’s all she wrote. Best spot of Super Bowl R2D2. Take on the competition by name, and kick ‘em in the ding-ding. Then share a Twinkie.  Wow.

In general, cars made the best showing as a category, but also seemed to demonstrate the weirdest strategies. Audi (with agency Venables + Bell) spent $7 million on the 2-minute “Vampire Party,” which is a neat little spot that goes a LONG way to make a point about their LED headlights, which apparently recreate daylight so well they fry vampires. I love advertising that’s singular and focused and creatively makes a point about a particular feature. So points for telling us SOMETHING about the car. (More than others can say.) But on the Super Bowl? Let’s keep it brand-ey, okay?

Fiat: fantasy about a gorgeous Italian woman with all the soft-porn of latte foam. Chevy: “stunt drivers” thing was kind of done already by Nissan earlier this year. Cadillac: let’s take on BMW on the positioning they’ve owned for more than 25 years. We know the creatives came out to play, but where was the CMO in all of these executions?

Clint Eastwood enlisted to do a tug-at-your-heartstrings-but-watch-out-cuz-I-can-also-kick-your-ass sendup for Chrysler. Okay, this is exactly the kind of thing Americans who are feeling patriotic and puffed up want to hear. And the spot is well done, and turns last year’s coming-out party into an extended affair. All good. But I think we’ve all come to expect more from Wieden + Kennedy than a reboot of the 1984 Hal Riney “Morning in America” classic.

VW also took the let’s-build-on-last-year strategy with “Dog Strikes Back,” a touching anthropomorphic vignette of a dog who’s lost his mojo. The dog can hardly chase a car anymore because he’s gotten too complacent. So he embarks on a disciplined workout regimen, resists the temptation of mom’s table scraps and gets back into fighting shape so he can hustle out the door and chase that flashy new VW Beetle down the road. Really good work from Deutsch. Nice little tag on the end to connect the dots to last year’s “Vader” spot for Passat. Another winner for 2012.

One thumb up to Hyundai for a number of reasons. They’re feeling their oats these days (and they should – their sales are killing,) so they decide to invest in some Super Bowl branding. The “cheetah” spot and the “think fast” spot (both from Innocean) weren’t feats of advertising genius, but they were solid entries into a pretty crowded field of automotive advertising. Compared to Toyota and Lexus, they were smarter. Not as funny as Honda’s “Ferris Bueller” or “Seinfeld,” but probably did more to educate viewers about the brand. And by the way, where was Ford, the company that bragged all year about not needing a bailout?

This article first appeared on Technorati.