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GM forces YouTube to yank gay Camaro ad
Posted Jul 13 2009, 08:52 AM by Catherine Holahan Rating:msn money
<span style="font-weight: bold">Recent online car ads featuring muscular men in tight briefs were too racy even for a sports car manufacturer</span>. <span style="font-weight: bold">General Motors has reportedly pulled the videos, which promoted GM's Chevrolet Camaro to a homosexual audience. </span>
The videos, which were posted to YouTube, featured male models leaning seductively over the hood of a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, wearing only tiny yellow underwear emblazoned with the car's logo. <span style="font-weight: bold">They were created by a Camaro enthusiast to promote "Gay Day at the Movies</span>," a Los Angeles event that featured a screening of the new Transformers movie. <span style="font-style: italic">Chevrolet supplied the vehicle used in the video</span>, said company spokesman Adam Denison in an interview with MSN Money last week.
<span style="font-weight: bold">After reviewing the videos</span>, <span style="font-style: italic">GM decided they were "not in good taste</span>," according to USA Today. The company still has an outreach group dedicated, in part, to marketing to that community.
<span style="font-weight: bold">In addition to the blatant use of sexual images</span>, the Camaro videos were noteworthy because they highlighted the challenge GM faces marketing the same car to different audiences.
Long-time GM-president Alfred P. Sloan once said that the auto maker's goal was to create "a car for every purse and purpose." But that motto doesn't apply to post-bankruptcy GM. The automaker's new goal is to create models with mass appeal.
General Motors doesn't have the resources to produce a car for every market demographic. As part of GM's turnaround strategy, it is shedding four of the eight brands it sold in the U.S. It is selling Saturn to Penske Automotive Group, Saab to a Swedish consortium and Hummer to China's Sichuan Tengzhong, an industrial machinery company. GM is eliminating its Pontiac brand. That leaves just Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac to keep General Motors in business.
Chevrolet, maker of the Camaro, is a particularly important brand that receives much of GM's marketing muscle. The brand is the most popular, by far, of all of GM's remaining brands. It alone has about 12.3% of the auto market, according to Autodata. The new GM - sans Hummer, Saab, Saturn and Pontiac - has about 17% of the market.
The Camaro is one model that GM is pushing to mass audiences. A character in the new Transformers movie is based on GM's 2010 Camaro. (Transformers, of course, is based on a popular comic book in which vehicles turn into robots). The hope is that the movie will help the car appeal to young people and their parents. Meanwhile, GM is also marketing the car in the Middle East, using viral marketing techniques in the U.S. to promote the car to various groups, and has plans to market the vehicle in Europe as well.
Recent marketing campaigns have had some success. The 2010 Camaro sold more than 9,000 units in June and GM is working to fill orders for another 25,000 vehicles. That's not bad for a car that has only been available at dealerships for three months.
Posted Jul 13 2009, 08:52 AM by Catherine Holahan Rating:msn money
<span style="font-weight: bold">Recent online car ads featuring muscular men in tight briefs were too racy even for a sports car manufacturer</span>. <span style="font-weight: bold">General Motors has reportedly pulled the videos, which promoted GM's Chevrolet Camaro to a homosexual audience. </span>
The videos, which were posted to YouTube, featured male models leaning seductively over the hood of a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, wearing only tiny yellow underwear emblazoned with the car's logo. <span style="font-weight: bold">They were created by a Camaro enthusiast to promote "Gay Day at the Movies</span>," a Los Angeles event that featured a screening of the new Transformers movie. <span style="font-style: italic">Chevrolet supplied the vehicle used in the video</span>, said company spokesman Adam Denison in an interview with MSN Money last week.
<span style="font-weight: bold">After reviewing the videos</span>, <span style="font-style: italic">GM decided they were "not in good taste</span>," according to USA Today. The company still has an outreach group dedicated, in part, to marketing to that community.
<span style="font-weight: bold">In addition to the blatant use of sexual images</span>, the Camaro videos were noteworthy because they highlighted the challenge GM faces marketing the same car to different audiences.
Long-time GM-president Alfred P. Sloan once said that the auto maker's goal was to create "a car for every purse and purpose." But that motto doesn't apply to post-bankruptcy GM. The automaker's new goal is to create models with mass appeal.
General Motors doesn't have the resources to produce a car for every market demographic. As part of GM's turnaround strategy, it is shedding four of the eight brands it sold in the U.S. It is selling Saturn to Penske Automotive Group, Saab to a Swedish consortium and Hummer to China's Sichuan Tengzhong, an industrial machinery company. GM is eliminating its Pontiac brand. That leaves just Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac to keep General Motors in business.
Chevrolet, maker of the Camaro, is a particularly important brand that receives much of GM's marketing muscle. The brand is the most popular, by far, of all of GM's remaining brands. It alone has about 12.3% of the auto market, according to Autodata. The new GM - sans Hummer, Saab, Saturn and Pontiac - has about 17% of the market.
The Camaro is one model that GM is pushing to mass audiences. A character in the new Transformers movie is based on GM's 2010 Camaro. (Transformers, of course, is based on a popular comic book in which vehicles turn into robots). The hope is that the movie will help the car appeal to young people and their parents. Meanwhile, GM is also marketing the car in the Middle East, using viral marketing techniques in the U.S. to promote the car to various groups, and has plans to market the vehicle in Europe as well.
Recent marketing campaigns have had some success. The 2010 Camaro sold more than 9,000 units in June and GM is working to fill orders for another 25,000 vehicles. That's not bad for a car that has only been available at dealerships for three months.