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John Tantillo's Brand Winner... And Loser: Ford & GM and the U.S. Census Super Bowl Ad
Posted by The Marketing Doctor at 2/8/2010 7:39 AM 
Categories: Marketing,Branding
Tags: recall Cadillac Fed Ex Chevy Super Bowl GM Pepsi branding strategy Ford Not Companies People Buy Brands Toyota U.S. Census branding General Motors TV advertising Tantillo Super Bowl commercial People Buy Brands Not Companies
Categories: Marketing,Branding
Tags: recall Cadillac Fed Ex Chevy Super Bowl GM Pepsi branding strategy Ford Not Companies People Buy Brands Toyota U.S. Census branding General Motors TV advertising Tantillo Super Bowl commercial People Buy Brands Not Companies
John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:
| Brand Winners... | And Loser... |
 |  |
Winner: Ford and GM
Loser: the U.S. Census Super Bowl Ad
Without further ado:
Winner
I’ll keep the winner short.
Ford and General Motors get the crown for re-organizing themselves, getting on the track to recovery and not throwing their brands out with the bathwater.
The very fact that Ford and General Motors have remained brand companies has insulated them from the kind of mass destruction that Toyota is currently experiencing.
As I wrote last week about Toyota:
With the exception of their branding master-stroke of Lexus, Toyota cross-labels every one of its car brands with its corporate brand.
The problem with this kind of corporate brand strategy? Well, when one product in the corporate line-up has a problem, so does the entire corporate brand and all of the individual brands under the corporate umbrella.
In this case: If one of Toyota’s car brands has a problem, it infects all of Toyota’s cars and its corporate image. This won’t happen —or be as grave— if Chevy has a recall (i.e., the Cadillac brand won’t be touched).
Bottom line: Ford and GM now are in a perfect position to reassert themselves in the market and underscore the quality of each of their brands. (Ford needs to apply the GM brand approach even more and better distinguish its brands from its company, lest it have a Toyota problem down the track.)
The marketing lesson here is to never give up just because your competition seems to be winning. Fundamental marketing problems —like Toyota’s over-reliance on company image over brand— can bite your competition. As long as you’ve been running your race, this means you will find yourself in an excellent position to kick your business into an even higher gear.
Oh, and a brand winner that deserves a mention: well done, New Orleans Saints! Talk about bringing back a team and a city!
The Loser
The United States Government is this week’s loser for deciding to spend 2.5 million dollars to buy a thirty-second ad for the Census in this year’s Super Bowl.
In my new book, People Buy Brands, Not Companies, due out in less than two weeks, I devote a whole chapter to the preposterous waste of Super Bowl ads. Talk about dumb marketing.
With the exception of a few cases and strategies, Super Bowl advertisements make little marketing sense and are merely ways to burnish the creative reputation of a Madison avenue ad agency.
Sadly, it is no big surprise that the United States Government has decided to waste some of our hard earned cash.
Five reasons why this was a bad idea:
1. It doesn’t look like the people behind the US.. Census did their research. Otherwise, they would have learned from the dot-comers who spent oodles on Super Bowl advertising and didn’t see much of a return.
2. Multiple impressions are critical. (Some argue at least 20 are needed to generate a response from a viewer.) The U.S. Census just spent 2.5 million on a single one.
3. Not everybody watches the Super Bowl. Advertising on the channels that aren’t carrying the big game could reach up to twice the number of viewers.
4. The message that Super Bowl marketing might not be the golden ticket has begun to sink in. This year, rates have fallen from 3.0 to 2.5 million dollars for a thirty-second spot, and Fortune 500s like Fed Ex, GM and Pepsi are either sitting this one out or reducing their exposure.
5. The amount spent on this one ad could buy up to 600 thirty-second TV ads in the NY market, or 800 thirty-second TV ads in L.A.
Nope, it’s not a surprise, but maybe it’s confirmation of just where Super Bowl advertising is headed. Sure, people will keep talking about the ads the day after, and they’ll get a lot of hits on YouTube. But if the same government that can spend hundreds of dollars on a wrench or thousands on a toilet is buying Super Bowl ads, it seems to this old marketer that’s pretty good evidence in and of itself that these ad buys are wildly over-priced..
And, remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
Just because a certain marketing tactic generates hype does not mean it is helpful for the short- or long-term success of your brand. Unless hype generates sales, it’s just entertainment.
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