GM Votes Off Multi-Million Dollar Survivor Sponsorship
The tribe has spoken, but this time the tribe is automaker General Motors, who has decided to drop its sponsorship of CBS’s Survivor reality series.
Detroit, MI-based GM said that its decision to pull the plug on its sponsorship (which dates back to Survivor‘s 2000 debut) had nothing to do with Survivor’s controversial decision to implement race-segregated teams in the upcoming show.
“We made this decision three months ago heading into TV’s upfront season,” said Ryndee Carney, manager of advertising and marketing communications at GM. “We were not aware that CBS was changing the format of the show when we made our decision.”
CBS said that the 13th installment of the series would pit 20 castaways against each other by race—black, white, Asian and Hispanic—drawing widespread criticism.
For the most part, GM said it was shifting its marketing strategy away from the show because it was becoming increasingly difficult to integrate its vehicles in a show, which features contestants competing in remote locations. The upcoming season, Survivor: Cook Islands, debuts Sept. 14.
“Our philosophy and strategy with product placement has evolved,” Carney said. “What we’re trying to do with vehicles in films and shows is make the vehicle an integral part of the storyline or almost part of a character…That’s very different than showing vehicles sitting on a desert island or just giving it away as part of a sweepstakes.”
Survivor still reigns as a Top 10 program, however ratings have fallen about 26% over the last few years and last spring only 17 million people watched, marking the shows lowest-ever viewership, according the news reports.
But over the last six years, GM seemed to integrate well with Survivor spending a reported $12.5 million a season for product placement within the hit TV series, according to USA Today.
In 2003’s Survivor: Pearl Islands edition, the automaker gave away a GMC Envoy XUV—featured at the Web site—to a contestant. And last year, for GM’s Pontiac Torrent SUV brand, GM launched a Survivor Search in the City promotion tied to the Survivor: Guatemala—The Maya Empire installment. The campaign sent six former survivors driving new Torrents as they went about their daily life in their home cities and local regions. Consumers were asked to find and snap a picture of the survivor with their Torrent on their camera phone. Consumers submitted the images for a chance to win five 2006 Pontiac Torrents in what Pontiac dubbed Torrents for Your Tribe.
At that time, Pontiac’s Marketing Director Mark-Hans Richer said in a statement: “While many companies place their product in a show, this time we’ve sort of placed the show in our product.”
Meanwhile, in the newest season, Survivor contestants will vie for $1 million on an island in the South Pacific. As the number of contestants dwindle, the teams typically merge into one group until the final two are left standing. Last season, the show divided contestants into groups by age: older men, younger men, older women and younger women.
Earlier this week, New York politicians staged a protest outside CBS headquarters over the network’s plan to segregate the contestants, according to news reports. City officials said they plan to write letters to Survivor sponsors asking them to reconsider their plans, reports said.
So far, The New York Times reported that Home Depot, Campbell Soup, United Postal Service and Coca-Cola are not returning for the new season but said their decisions were also not based on the show’s new format.
“We did not pull out of Survivor,” said John Faulkner, director of brand communications at Campbell’s Soup. “In the past we’ve advertised opportunistically in scattered markets but for this season, Survivor was never in our media plan or buy because it doesn’t deliver the demographic that we go after.”
In response to the continued outcry, Survivor producer Mark Burnett refuted claims this week that the show is racial, saying members from each team vote each other off early on in the show, news reports said. CBS show promos continue to feature host Jeff Probst saying “This is definitely a social experiment like we’ve never done before.”
CBS said that it has a full roster of advertisers for the upcoming show and that GM’s position had been filled, but declined to elaborate.
Meanwhile, as GM secedes its Survivor role (which included a slew of sweeps giveaway of its vehicles), questions abound as to how effective the partnership was in moving vehicles off dealers’ lots.
USA Today reported that up until last year, the automaker had distributed nine models of its cars and trucks to Survivor contestants without any evidential lift in sales. In response, GM exec Betsy Lazar told the paper that the automotive industry differs from the CPG industry and indicated that, “Every month, only 1.5% of the population will buy a new car or truck. So to see an immediate lift, it just doesn’t happen.”
Nevertheless, GM will continue to play a role in CBS programming. The automaker is continuing its sponsorship of the hit drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, news reports said. The Yukon Denali SUV is featured prominently in the show as the investigators’ mobile analysis unit.
As for the money GM typically spends on Survivor: “We can’t tell where it will be invested or if we’re moving it from CBS to other networks, ” Carney said. “This is not the case of we’re taking money from Survivor to another show. We do media planning more holistically based on what our business needs are.”
Those needs may be shifting as GM continues to report lackluster sales. Last month, the automaker reported that its year-to-date vehicle sales plummeted 14.1% to 2.47 million vehicles sold. For the month, GM moved 410,332 vehicles off of lots, a 19.5% dip over July 2005.
To help boost traffic to their showrooms, domestic automakers spent $8.45 billion in advertising last year. GM ranked second in spending among advertisers (after Procter & Gamble Co.) with $2.99 billion spent, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
