With GM pulling an about-"face" and now returning to Facebook as a limited advertiser, could the company's re-embrace of Super Bowl advertising be far off? Either way, Facebook is continuing to push skeptical advertisers to take a closer look at its site.

Chevrolet is advertising on Facebook again, in a test of mobile ads for the Chevy Sonic, less than a year after General Motors' very public repudiation of the effectiveness of paid advertising on the site. The brand "is testing a number of mobile advertising solutions, including Facebook, as part of its 'Find New Roads' campaign," Chris Perry, vice president of U.S. Chevrolet marketing, said in a confirming statement issued by GM in the wake of a story published by Advertising Age.

It's an "industry-first mobile-only pilot campaign" for Sonic that "utilizes newly available targeting and measurement capabilities of Facebook."Continue reading...

With the hiring away of Tim Mahoney from Volkswagen as Chevrolet's global chief marketing officer, General Motors appears to be moving one more step closer to a long-discussed goal of obliterating the GM "brand" altogether.

Mahoney—who has helped VW achieve strong double-digit sales gains in the U.S. in each of the last three years—has been named to the newly created post of global CMO for Chevrolet and of global GM marketing operations leader.

Because Mahoney, a three-decade veteran of automotive marketing, will report to GM's interim CMO, Alan Batey, his addition bulks up the Chevrolet brand that Batey also has been heading up for the last year, including recently replacing the "Chevrolet Runs Deep" tagline with the "Find New Roads" positioning.

Batey was vice president of U.S. sales and service and then took over as interim CMO for the corporation when GM's global CMO Joel Ewanick departed abruptly last year.Continue reading...

Now that Chevrolet has rolled out the first creative under its "Find New Roads" brand positioning, General Motors CMO Alan Batey wants to give the upbeat, product-oriented theme as much exposure as he can.

Batey tells brandchannel that, in addition to new vehicle-specific TV ads in the weeks ahead, Chevrolet will be doing more in-cinema advertising than ever before.

The original ad that aired during the recent Grammy Awards telecast on CBS—including vignettes separately featuring the Chevrolet Volt, Spark, Sonic, Corvette Stingray and Impala—"will be broken down into four standalone-product ads," Batey told us, "and we'll also be using that work quite extensively not just on TV but also in cinema," he said.Continue reading...

General Motors is sticking with its pledge not to advertise during this year's Super Bowl, interim CMO Alan Batey told brandchannel. But the automaker's VP of U.S. sales, service and global marketing declined to rule out an advertising kick-off of the Chevrolet brand's new tag line, "Find New Roads," during TV spots before or after the Big Game on February 3 on CBS.

And in the meantime, Batey and Chevrolet do have their own huge moment to share with the world: sponsorship of Sunday's football (as in soccer) match between the Manchester United team and Liverpool in the U.K., which Batey said would fetch a global TV audience that could be much larger than the worldwide draw for the Super Bowl.

"This platform is huge for us, and it's really only the beginning of our relationship" with Manchester United, Liverpool and the Barclays Premier League, Batey said. "It will be a huge part of creating awareness for Chevy around the world." And taking advantage of — as well as boosting — Chevy's increasingly global platform is one main reason for the new "Find New Roads" positioning, which is replacing the lackluster "Chevy Runs Deep."Continue reading...

After an iffy few months, General Motors executives are displaying a bit more pep in their step these days. That's what can happen after GM reported U.S. August sales that were 10 percent ahead of a year ago.

On a relative basis, GM's gain was the lowest year-to-year of any of the major OEMs in the U.S. market. But on a call with auto reporters on Wednesday, GM sales executives were able to boast about satisfying results from Chevrolet's sponsorship of the Summer Olympics telecasts on NBC, some timely brand-building under its Chevy Confidence program to clear out 2012 models, and even the relatively new position of being able to hold firm on small-car prices while competitors have to dig deeper into their bag of incentive tricks.

To be sure, GM's August sales tally pales in comparision to Toyota, which posted a 46-percent gain over a year ago, and Honda, with a 58 percent bump. But the size of those advances in large part was attributable to the Japanese companies' dismal 2011 results as they tried to recover output from the earthquake and tsunami in spring of last year. And even as the Japanese brands and other competitors have been trying to claw for market share this summer, GM has been able to maintain "price discipline" in small cars thanks to strong sales of its own models.Continue reading...

From his first public remarks since taking over as interim CMO of General Motors, it's clear that Alan Batey isn't planning any abrupt changes in policies, directions or programs as he steers the company's marketing efforts at least for the short term. Only recently promoted from Chevrolet sales vice president to vice president of U.S. sales and service, Batey was just tapped again — this time to succeed Joel Ewanick, the controversial global CMO who unexpectedly parted ways with GM on Sunday.

"There is no change," Batey told reporters and analysts during the company's July sales call. "We've always been one thing here, and we have no change in direction or priorities. Our focus is on executing. There is a lot going on right now; a lot of new products. We'll have no disruption and no change. It's all about execution."

From Batey's remarks, it's easy to infer that the main problem his bosses had with Ewanick was with Ewanick, not necessarily with his work. And GM did say that his dismissal had to do with execution of Chevy's sponsorship agreement with the Manchester United soccer franchise, not with the fact of his having struck a deal with Manchester. Sure enough, Batey's first duty in his new role on Monday was to announce the signing of the Man U deal after terms were altered.

But more (likely) is going on than it appears.Continue reading...