Men Free Blog

General Motors and Hollywood’s little gold statue have been friends for 11 years, but with a reduction in its marketing and ad budget, the U.S. automaker has walked away from high profile events such as the Super Bowl, Emmys, and Oscars. Thankfully for ABC, the multimillion-dollar breach in the 2009 Oscars telecast created by GM’s departure has been immediately filled by Hyundai.

As of now, Hyundai has only signed on to take over an unknown quantity of the $1.7-million-plus ad slots – it isn’t known whether the Korean automaker will completely replace GM’s presence at the awards. Along with a new agency, and an increased marketing budget – and all those SEMA cars – Hyundai’s ad buy is another measure of its confidence in the new Genesis and its push to move into premium territory.

If the song is true that “to everything, turn turn turn, there is a season, turn turn turn,” then we’re going to need a lot more seasons for the Fiat 500. In addition to versions by StudioTorino, Diesel and Abarth, not to mention a convertible and an F1-themed run of 12, Fiat is making a special edition 500 to celebrate the car’s appearance in the movie Lupin III: Green vs Red.

The Japanese anime film itself celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Lupin III series of movies, which began in 1979 when gentleman thief Lupin III used a yellow Fiat 500. While the film is out now on DVD, the special edition Fiat 500 in yellow livery and graced with Lupin’s image won’t come around until the latter half of 2009, and probably only in Japan. If Fiat keeps this up, it might just challenge the Ford Mustang for the title of Most Gratuitous Special Editions Differentiated by Inconsequential Details.

It’s a fact that the English language is currently being sliced to ribbons. Spelling and grammar have gone out the window, and elocution is such a lost art that we’re amazed when a speaker can manage a paragraph. It’s interesting to see where these shortcomings manifest themselves. One would assume that an advertising agency, being in the business of communicating, would double- and triple-check a message before sending it out for the world to see. Imagine our surprise, then, when across our digital desks slid a memo from Carmichael Lynch trumpeting the Minneapolis, MN agency’s relationship with Subaru of America.

It didn’t start well. The subject header of the email read: “Subaru 360 Goes Airbourn (sic) To Find Home on 10th Floor.” Interesting capitalization, and a very creative spelling of airborne. Bush league for an agency that handles Harley Davidson, Jack Link’s, Cargill, and Toys ‘R’ Us, to name a few. Intrigued by the mention of a 360, Subaru’s diminutive first stab at automobiles, we read on. Carmichael Lynch, upon landing the Subaru of America account in 2007, located a 360 and had it spiffed up for display in the company’s 10th floor lobby. While small, the only way to get the little Subie ten stories up was a crane, which hoisted the car through a window last Saturday. Delightful little story, and we were inclined to give the wacky subject line a pass until we read the last sentence, which started: “Today’s Subaru Forrester…” Whoa. If we were SoA, we’d be incensed. Spelling bee time: Forester. F-o-r-e-s-t-e-r, Forester. Forest is a chronically misspelled word, but it’s still intolerable when it’s the very firm being paid to represent the actual product.

Head to Maserati’s website and you’re greeted with a tantalizingly coy poll, asking users to guess what event will take place on October 2nd, the first day of the Paris Motor Show. The overwhelming popular opinion is that a new car will be debuted, possibly the smaller Maser that’s supposed to take aim at Porsche. A test mule was spied a while back, though that car didn’t have the folding hardtop the new mini-Maserati, based on a hacked-down GranTurismo, is whispered to be carrying. We’ll all just have to wait, each day feeling longer than the next. What else could it be, other than a car? The idea of generating such buzz over a new website, logo, or advertising campaign (all three are choices) is ludicrous, but the rest, including a new production facility could seem plausible. Even more intriguing, it could be all of the above. We want a smaller Maserati, and we’re going to hold our breath until we turn as blue as the website’s banner image to get one.

Last year, many people got their first glimpse of Hyundai’s new Genesis luxury sedan as the Giants beat the stuffing out of the Patriots during Superbowl XLII. Pleased with the results of that effort, Hyundai is coming back to the big game, this time with the Genesis Coupe. Outgoing creative agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners is handling two 30-second commercials featuring Hyundai’s sporty new rear-drive two door. While the agency change has raised some eyebrows, Hyundai insists that it will continue to work with Goodby for quite some time, even as it transitions creative duties to World Marketing Group, already handling media buys for the automaker. We’ll have to tune in for all four quarters to see if the jilted ad folks mailed it in, but judging from the quality of Goodby’s work on the Genesis Sedan - and the target-meeting 8,000 units sold - the pigskin-centric effort will likely meet with success.

Marketers have been known to make claims that test our good sense, our gullibility and our patience. But in a field in which it’s often the best story — not the best product — that wins, some of the more unsightly details can get left out when making a pitch. Nevertheless, there is still, as Pinocchio’s nose would tell you, a line between a tall tale and what’s commonly referred to as a lie.

Saab Australia drove its entire model range over that line when it claimed in a campaign last year that “Every Saab is green, with carbon emissions neutral across the entire Saab range.” The ads also said Saab would plant 17 native trees to offset the CO2 emissions for the lifespan of each car it sold. Turns out that 17 trees only offsets the carbon produced in the first year of a car’s life. Saab left that part out when they lied added the small print.

Australia’s competition watchdog took Saab’s parent company, GM Holden, to court, and in a verdict for truth and the environment, Saab’s claims were declared, ahem, “misleading”. GM has pledged to “retrain its marketing staff in relation to making green claims,” and plant a forest of 12,500 trees to cover the lifetime emissions of all the cars sold during the campaign.

Ford sponsored the Toronto Raptors back in 2006, and one of the promotional ties in the deal was a special Ford Fusion Raptors Edition (here is the promo video). The car is replete with a magical selection of colors and images on the outside, and basketball-themed colors and textures inside. Check out that b-ball steering wheel, and those seats, and the TV in the trunk that would allow you to both ruin your eyes and watch games at a truly awful angle. If nothing else, we’re impressed that it took two and a half years to show up on the used car sales floor. Less surprising is the fact that it’s only done 5,900 kilometers in that time. It can be all yours for $25,000 Canadian… or you can just check out the high res pictures below. Thanks for the tip, Lance!

In what could very possibly be the worst auto-related commercial we have ever seen, Volkswagen has somehow convinced Brooke Shields (really Brooke, are things this bad?) to shill its new, at least to VW showrooms, Caravan Routan minivan. Apparently, what the people want is a badge-engineered Volkswagen version of the Pentastar minivan platform. In the extended commercial, Shields attempts to explain with a straight face that Americans are getting pregnant just so they can buy a Routan and enjoy its German engineering. Except that it’s not German engineered, unless you count the fact that Daimler was still married to Chrysler when the van was developed. We certainly don’t. Sure, the Routan’s Chrysler-sourced suspension was probably tweaked by Volkswagen, and it’s got softer styling up front to differentiate it from its Auburn Hills-based brothers, but those credentials are far from enough to call it “German engineered”.

First art imitates life and now video games do the same, with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Nissan having joined forces to create the GT Academy. Over the course of eight months, the academy culled a group of wannabe racers from a field of entrants who posted the best lap times in GT5 Prologue. Then, for five days at Silverstone, the finalists competed in the game and on the actual track, watched by ex-F1 racer Johnny Herbert and a panel of five judges.

The two winners were just announced, and Top Gun status went to Lars Schlomer and Luis Ordonez. Schlomer is a taxi driver in Bonn, Germany; Ordonez is an MBA student from Spain. Now that they’ve won, they’ll be thrown into boot camp for four months to learn to how to race for real silver: in four months, they’ll have to earn their racing licenses and get ready to drive a factory-backed Nissan 350Z in the 24 Hours of Dubai this coming January.The rest of us will have to be content with GT5 Prologue for now…

Despite the fact that capping the cost of gas didn’t work out so well for Chrysler in the U.S., General Motors’ Australian arm, Holden, is launching a new incentive that guarantees gas will be 99¢/liter for two years after your vehicle’s original date of purchase. The system works much like the one Chrysler used: buyers get a debit card that they use when filling up their tanks. That debit card will be tied to the purchasers bank account, which will be debited a few days later for the reduced rate, regardless of how much the fuel had actually cost. If all of this sounds a bit confusing, click here for the details from Holden. We’ve also pasted GM’s official press release after the break.

As we mentioned, a similar promotion wasn’t too successful for Chrysler. There are a few differences, though. Chrysler’s vehicles aren’t quite class-competitive while Holden’s generally are. There were also more fuel efficient vehicles to choose from in the U.S., thereby making the gas card savings a bit irrelevant. In Australia where the V8 is still king, that’s not really the case. Will this new scheme make Holden’s V8-powered, rear-wheel-drive vehicles sell quicker? We don’t know… but we’re positive that a similar deal could go a long way towards putting an Pontiac G8 GT in our own personal garages.