Rob V

Here's a couple 'older' GM commercials on Youtube, just for reference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtxUBXBl_E4 - 2006 Corvette

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wm8jfCKJtM&NR=1 - 3rd Gen Camaro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBs5FuCN8nE - Cobalt "Bump"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9R6hXXgjn4 - Cobalt "Get away with more"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q4TEGZkIBA - V6 Camaro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGkgKSzaKVE - 1995 Camaro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCtipr5B0Hk - 4th gen Trans-Am

Brangeta

Big Als Z-- I agree with you completely in many ways, but have a slight difference in opinion, mainly when you numbered stuff off. Most may be due to just the words you chose to use. For example, I don't want them to "talk" about performance at all. I want demonstrations. "Talk" is words you can read in a magazine, brochure, or on a website once you get people's attention. It's actual experiences that can only be witnessed on TV that the public needs to see. If you want a performance commercial, one effective way to make it would be to have a camera mounted on the dash in the face of a person in the car going down a 1/4 mile. It'd show just how cool the car is, and this is most certainly something you can't read.

You may have just slipped up and said "talk" when you really meant something else, but I wanted to point that out just in case.

A note about women...

In many advertisements aimed at women, they just miss the point completely. For women, you have to appeal to their emotions and sensibilities (just like in real life relations with them), which is why I believe my theme "for the guy (or in this case, girl/lady/woman) who doesn't have to make excuses" is a good plan.

Many women would look at the Camaro, and based on its looks, size it up immediately to be something they couldn't drive everyday. (I wonder how successful those old Trans Am commercials in the 90s were with women?) That's why some of the functionality should be demonstrated in the commercials. And when I say functionality, I don't mean like those Dodge Caravan commercials where they show the kids in the backseat watching movies or the seats folding up. I just want them to simply show the car being used and showing off ANYTHING that is better demonstrated than read in a brochure.

Many women overall, do not want their car to do burnouts or any of the uncontrolled maneuvers men are fond of. I mean, if you want to target ME, you could do that just by showing the car being gassed around the corner a little bit and slightly fishtailing, I'd love it! But many women (and men) would look at that and say, "if it does that so easily, I'm afraid to drive it!" GM's ad agency (Campbell Ewald or otherwise) doesn't need to please ME (or anyone like me), because although I'm not gung-ho about the car, I AM considering it. There are very few things that would sway my choice with regard to the Camaro in a commercial. Maybe the colors offered. That's probably all. If I can't get my color, I'll wait a year. If I can't get it that year, I'll wait another. But if something else ends up parked outside my apartment, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Back to advertising (as opposed to product engineering, manufacturing, or whatever you want to call what I was just talking about)

GM's commercials needs to please the BIGGEST chunk of their potential customers, who are not already considering the car.

People, but especially women, want the car to be shown to be reliable, trustworthy, safe, and efficient, while having plenty of style. They want to look good in the car. Everybody deep down inside wants these qualities in a daily driver, whether they are 20 years old, or 80 years old. These things are universal between the sexes and ages within the car buying market. (Teenagers who don't pay for their car themselves could care less about it being reliable or safe in most cases, they just want it to look good, so I've excluded them).

Here's an anecdote; a female friend of mine, who is well off, asked me what car I thought she should get, and I asked her what she wanted it to look like. She replied that she wanted it to look sexy and attract attention and make her look good. Being the diehard Chevy fan I am, I suggested she get a Corvette, and then even I'd date her (it was a joke) and she said "hahaha no... I don't want to have to have to get it fixed all the time and that's more of a guy's car... I was thinking more along the lines of an Infiniti."

That statement told me a lot of things. It told me that she's been affected by decades worth of bad reputation that no longer remains for the most part, advertising that didn't make a positive impression on her, and product positioning that may have made her feel the Corvette wasn't for women. Or maybe she just simply doesn't like it! There's ALWAYS that! But I just thought I'd share and use that as an example, because the Camaro isn't the same type of animal as a Corvette.

The Camaro COULD BE her "Infiniti" she wants, if it was only advertised in a way to attract her to it.

Notes about other things you mentioned:...

- The American Revolution ads don't appeal to me either. As a whole, the brand Chevrolet doesn't appeal to me at all in their advertising, and never really has. There's a heavy "country western" bias, especially in Texas, and I just don't find the advertisements appealing at all. As far as other cars go that I could personally consider, Pontiac, Mazda, and Mini intrigue me. However, you must also consider that I am 22, and a bit younger than the market GM thinks they are after (35 year olds), and I'm mentally a bit more uppity than the average Chevy trunk or car owner (many Camaro and Corvette owners tend to be) typically are. In the unobtainable area, that Maserati GranTurismo video I posted just about gives me shivers down my spine, particularly when viewed at fullsize on their website.

- Design-- No need to talk about the design as you mention Big Al. We have eyes to see how good it looks and most people's eyes would glaze over during a commercial like this. That's like telling me how the peanut butter is made instead of how good it tastes.

- Performance-- Performance cannot be shunned, but it doesn't have to be presented in a way that implies that is the only selling point. The Camaro is not a Lotus Elise, nor is it an F1 car. The Camaro is an everyday driver that just happens to be wickedly fast. It has multiple selling points (which you realize Big Al, but I just wanted to mention that because I don't want people to get the wrong idea and think I want "boring" commercials).

- Safety/Quality-- Only need to show how the car handles and how the airbags deployed and stuff like that. Sometimes commercials can overload people, just like my example about peanut butter. I don't care what stabilitrac is or how it does what it does, I just want to be sold on the idea that "I can't possibly bear ordering my car if it doesn't have this great option!" With regard to chassis strength, I think if most people heard something along the lines of "the chassis has 400 Newtons worth of tensile strength" they'd immediately throw up. There's a Ford truck ad right now with the guy from Dirty Jobs on it that is like that. However, it fortunately has the entertaining visual of a truck strung up by it's bumper to some sort of cable spinning the thing around like crazy. It's important to keep commercials simple and to the point. Show the benefit, and make people want it. Don't give them a science lesson. They can learn about that on your website or in your brochure.

- the "Enthusiastic" section-- I wholeheartedly disagree with everything in this section. I'm sorry, but I believe showing owners is a terrible idea. One of the biggest flaws in advertising is showing people in your ads. This makes people think that's what you have to look like (or what you WILL look like) if you own a car like that. I'll give you an example. Have you heard of Church's Chicken (I'm not sure if it is a national restaurant)? Their commercials last year ONLY featured black people in them, and this year's has a hispanic woman, if I remember correctly, amongst about a dozen black people. To this, I said in my head "hey! I used to eat there, what about the white people?" And I haven't eaten there since, because I felt like I was being excluded (perhaps similar to how my friend may have thought she was being excluded from buying a Corvette).

This has been a big realization in the field of advertising in recent years. People say "that's not me!" and look for products that don't exclude them. It's one thing to show all of the generations of Camaro, but it's a whole different thing to show:
1. Paul the redneck 18 wheeler big rig driver who's 50 pounds overweight, missing 3 teeth, and has a 10 yr old unwashed baseball cap on.
2. Lisa the stripper who bought a Camaro because she wanted "a car just as hot as she is."
3. Michael the CEO who has had plastic surgery 3 times and owns 15 different Camaros.
4. Ugly Robert and his ugly wife Tiffany who have been Chevy fans for over 20 years.
5. Brangeta the extremely pale guy who sits online for over an hour typing about advertising on a Camaro messageboard.

These are just things that people don't want to see. It may be reality, but I for one like Camaros because of what they are, not because of who owns them. It won't make people buy the product. It may work for eharmony, and some other dating commercials, but it sure doesn't work for cars.

Mjolnir

That's what I said.

Brangeta

What do you mean you said it?

I'm confused lol.

Mjolnir

I've been saying for a while, in multiple threads on multiple boards, that advertising for the Camaro, particularly the V6, should identify what sells import V6 coupes and mimic it.

My post above is from the first page of this thread.

Other than the mullet factor (which advertising should be expressly designed to counteract) there's no reason to buy a G35C, 350Z, Accord EX-L Coupe, Altima 3.5 SE Coupe, or Toyota Solara V6 over a Camaro V6.

Assuming a decently optioned V6 is ~300 horse and is priced in the mid twenties, of course.

All we have to do is explain that to your female friend, using her media of choice.

Unless she's a hopeless brand snob, the difference between her purchase of one RWD V6 over another boils down to advertising.

What is it about Infiniti advertising that has convinced her to buy a G35C? Ask her, and then duplicate it.

Brangeta

Her other car she wanted to get rid of was an Infiniti, so she had some brand loyalty I guess.

To me, the Infinitis are finally a good looking car. They were awful in the 90s.