Autoblog

Click above for high-res gallery of 2008 GM Style Event

After two years of combining celebrities, fashion and music with the best of its vehicle lineup, General Motors has decided that the 2009 GM Style Event just isn't worth the expense. The cancellation of GM Style is part of the General's goal to free up $15 billion in cuts and asset sales by 2009. Considering the automaker pays B- and C-list celebrities and sports figures to attend, there's some money on the table here. The event has actually been a big hit the past two years with attendees like Kid Rock and Jay-Z, Carmen Electra, Jeff Gordon and the some well known fashion designers from around the world. GM also used the bright lights and catwalk to show the Camaro Convertible Concept and Corvette ZR1 for the first time.

The death of GM Style comes right after the automaker decided to pull its advertising at the Emmy Awards and next year's Academy Awards broadcast. GM has been the largest advertiser of the Academy Awards over the past 10 years, with $97.1 million spent on the awards show since 1998. GM will still advertise at the Golden Globes, Grammys, and Country Music Awards in 2009.



[Source: Detroit News]

It is no secret that the automotive industry is hurting for sales to close out 2008. Over the past few months incentives have been thrown out left and right to draw in more buyers. The deals have not done enough to bring folks into the showroom, though. With all the media talk of bleeding Detroit, consumers know that the domestic manufacturers have been holding out on their best offers. Perhaps the memory of 2005's employee pricing incentives has kept many waiting on the fence. With 2009 models heading to dealerships as we speak, General Motors is hoping to end the stalemate. It will be testing the waters of employee pricing yet again beginning Wednesday, August 20th and running through September 2nd.

The employee discount program will apply across all 8 GM brands. Buick, Pontiac and GMC dealers will mark down 91 percent of their inventory on all 2008 models, along with the 2009 Pontiac Vibe and G5, Chevy Cobalt and HHR and, surprisingly, the Cadillac CTS. Chevrolet dealers can unload 90 percent of their 2008 inventory with all 2008 models eligible for the employee price. Cadillac, Saturn, SAAB, Hummer will each have their own stipulations as well, but it is certain that the discount will be widespread. The price reduction varies from vehicle to vehicle, but is typically on order of a few thousand dollars. Additional incentives will also still be offered on some slower selling items, such as, you guessed it, trucks and SUVs. So the question is, will employee pricing get you off the fence and into a dealership?

[Source: GM]

A tip of the cap is due to GM for the automaker's new Chevy Silverado TV spot, which premiered this Sunday during the Olympics. The spot features brief testimonials from drivers of high-mileage pickups wearing the bowtie badge, but one stands out more than the rest. Twenty seconds in, FDNY Firefighter Craig Monahan's segment opens with a wide shot of him standing in front of the Manhattan skyline. His battered truck has melted lights and a Ladder 5 placard affixed to the bed on the driver's side. In the spot, he recounts how the damaged truck started when he reached into the singed interior and turned the ignition key, saying that it served as an isnpiration, "If that truck could keep going, then we could all keep going."

This all happened on 9/11, a fact left unsaid but tactfully implied in the commercial. Veteran New York Daily News reporter Michael Daly knows Monahan and tells the truck's full story in an excellent piece that ran in Tuesday's Daily News. Frankly, you need to go there and just read the whole thing, because Daly's account is first-rate. Reading it also underscores the level of restraint GM exercised in how it used the truck in the commercial. It's a great TV spot, but the story behind that one particular 14-second segment is more remarkable and inspirational than you'd ever guess. Firefighter Monahan agreed to let his truck be used because he felt it was important for people see it and get a feel for what it represents. Monahan was compensated by GM for his participation, but he donated that money to another FDNY family, showing that even now, that burned and battered Chevy still helps him help others. We salute him, and we hope he keeps that truck forever. Thnks for the tip, Julius!

[Source: New York Daily News]

Mainstream media has been quick to pile on Detroit automakers, which, along with some questionable Motown metal, has helped drive nationwide perception of the Big Three into the ground. Now that times are tough at traditional media outlets, well, that's Detroit's fault, too. Back in 2004, about $24 billion was doled out to television, print, and radio ads. Fast forward to 2008, and painfully slow sales coupled with cash-strapped automakers and dealerships have cut that number to about $15 billion. That's putting an Excursion-sized dent in the earnings of stalwart media companies like Viacom and Time Warner (Autoblog and Weblogs, Inc. are owned by Time Warner), as the media giants point directly towards Detroit and a soft auto market to explain their drop in revenue.

While times are tough on TV, print advertising is taking the brunt of the blow. Newspapers took a $131 million hit in the first quarter of 2008 as dealers have pulled back on full and half-page ads due to slow sales and limited cash flow. The proliferation of mainstream Internet advertising is also cutting into old media's profits, as automakers feel they're getting more bang for the buck with less expensive online ads. With the car market looking worse by the day and the unabated growth of Internet advertising, we don't expect this trend to reverse itself any time soon.

[Source: New York Times]

Kia's hungry for your business, which explains the pending arrival of the Forte. The Spectra is a good car, but blends in far more than the attractively turned out Forte. It seems the Forte also has an appetite, and it's for the good stuff. Kia wants to bolster its image, so what better way than a clever commercial that infers that inside the Kia is all the goodness of a partially digested Bentley? Of course it's hyperbole, that's why it's so cool! Video embedded after the jump. Thanks for the tip, Alberto!

[Source: kia-world.net]

High fuel prices or no, MINI offers a solid entertainment-to-efficiency ratio. The neo-teeny MINI is fun to fling around, and if you can keep your boot out of the turbocharged engine in the Cooper S, you can have your fuel economy and eat it, too. To emphasize this point, MINI is launching a new campaign focused around what it calls the Carfun Footprint, and the new ad push includes its own website and new print ads and billboards with typically clever MINI taglines. If you're curious to see how your current vehicle stacks up against the MINI's Carfun quotient, head on over to carfunfootprint.com and plug in your vehicle info. Of course, you're not going to score as high as the R56, but you expected that, didn't you? At least MINI has avoided getting all preachy and kept its trademark whimsy intact. Lengthy press release after the jump.

[Source: MINI]

Click above for more shots of the MINI Clubman Rickshaws

The rickshaw is a time-honored method of transportation in China. While the vehicles were initially pulled around by men on foot, the pedal-powered versions have grown much more popular in recent years and are a symbol of Chinese culture. When Beijing MINI needed an interesting way to communicate that the Clubman model was being introduced in Chinese, especially in light of all the media attention on the Olympics, it back-halved a slew of new Clubmans, mounted a pedicab front-end and sent them out for business.

According to China Car Times, MINI's publicity stunt is working exactly as planned. Though the vast majority of media coverage is centered on those games from Greece, the MINI Rickshaws have managed to make some headlines of their own. We think the cabs turned out pretty cool, even incorporating the sunroof into the final design.


[Source: China Car Times]

Click above to watch the video

Saudis may be known for a lot of things, but let's face it – comedy is not one of them. Israelis on the other hand... have you seen The Zohan? In any event, it's not surprising that people in Saudi Arabia are outraged at something from Israel, but this time it has nothing to do with military actions or residential construction, and to be fair, while talk of boycotts is filling the air once again, they're not actually blaming Israel itself for anything. Instead, Nissan is the boycott target.

The spate was started by a commercial Israeli TV that depicts Arabian oil sheikhs getting medieval on a Nissan Tiida. The implication is that the car's fuel efficiency is harming the sheikhs' business interests. The Saudi regime, along with other oil-producing Gulf states, is threatening to boycott Nissan – which itself is collaborating on the development of the Project Better Place electric car system in Israel – if the automaker doesn't apologize.

Follow the jump to watch the commercial – which, strangely, we could only find in Arabic with Russian subtitles – and leave your thoughts in the comments section below (just please keep it tasteful).

[Source: Haaretz]

Despite Ford's mostly successful efforts to yank its product line along by the earlobes, it still needs to find cost savings. To that end, the advertising arms of the Ford and Lincoln-Mercury divisions have been combined, bucking the traditional Balkanization in the marketing wing.

Ford traditionally maintained separate sales and marketing groups, though a single person did serve as brand overlord for all three. Now, the marketing and sales efforts will be by product type, rather than brand, so the Edge team will also shill the MKX, for example. To execute this change, a game of musical chairs has been going on, with Brett Wheatley moving from general manager for Lincoln-Mercury to the customer incentives group, Lincoln brand manager Tom Grill will be joining the global marketing group, while global media manager for Ford, Mark Kaline, has separated from the Blue Oval. This deck shuffling may wind up with a good marketing hand, or it could be a whole bunch of worthless cards.

[Source: AdAge]

What happens when you combine corporate tone deafness, crappy 1980s-sounding schmaltz rock (think "Karate Kid" montage-level bad), and a dash of political incorrectness? You get this deliciously uncomfortable Mercedes-Benz propaganda extravaganza, "That's How We Beat Them All." Like Jason Giambi's mustache, this is so bad, it's awesome.

[Source: YouTube via NextAutos]