It had to happen. Chrysler was going to pay its dues for the “Thank You, America” ad, the auto industry’s biggest bonehead PR play since the corporate jet fiasco.
Car bloggers and others have been mouthing their outrage over the company’s “thanks for your investment” of bailout funds. The Chrysler blog has 241 reported comments on the ad, most like this:
Mr. Nardelli,
It takes a man with a whole lotta chutzpah to thank a person for investing in a company when they had zero voice in the matter.
My elected representatives decided ‘no’. The executive branch decided ‘yes’ through means that might be legal but frankly smell like rotten fish.
You may certainly get my money this way, but you will never see a dime of my money voluntarily spent on any of your products.
Brian Dunbar
Conservatives (and lots of others) are really steamed. Here’s what one of them did in a takeoff on the ad. Chrysler ran its full-page ads in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, “where prices for placement of a full-page ad can range between USD $206,000 - $264,000 and $112,000 and $217,000 respectively.”
You’ve got to be more than a little brain-dead (i.e., captive to the industry’s traditional corporate thinking and fossilized marketing) to produce costly print ads with a message like this.
As you might expect, big ad budget cuts are coming for both carmakers and dealers. For an industry that went overboard on TV last year, it’s time to come back to reality, says Advertising Age.
Promising better return on investment, GM will slash $600 million from U.S. advertising and promotions in the next four years to just $2.6 billion from $3.2 billion in 2008. It has not publicized its plans to accomplish this, though the automaker has cut out a number of high-profile events such as the Super Bowl.
Other carmakers are following suit, among them Toyota, Kia and VW, putting their efforts online and into videos, moving away from print and TV. Sports events will probably feature fewer macho truck ad interruptions.
The industry seems to be finally discovering the Internet. Whether it will be able to successfully negotiate that medium any better than it has print and TV remains to be seen. We hope the results for 2009 will be better than what we saw in 2008.
What about a “Thank you, Chrysler” ad? Send us a comment about what you think that should say.
—jgoods
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