Oldsmobile Launches Multimedia DR Blitz
OLDSMODIBLE HAS joined forces with Blockbuster Video in a first-time direct response campaign for its Silhouette Premiere minivan.
Targeted to families with children ages 9 to 13, the effort will include DR print and TV ads, direct mail and a Web site. It is budgeted at more than $10 million, according to brand manager Peter Langenhorst.
Why the Blockbuster tie-in? The new model Silhouette (price: $31,175) features a built-in entertainment center replete with videocassette recorder and compact disc player.
“We just saw the partnership with Blockbuster as a natural fit,” Langenhorst says.
In September, Oldsmobile began the DR print part of the campaign, with ads in magazines like People, Entertainment Weekly and Newsweek. All the ads play off the Yellow Brick Road theme of the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”
The ads offer a $25 Blockbuster video-rental debit card to anyone who comes in for a test drive at an Oldsmobile dealership. The card can be redeemed at more than 6,000 Blockbuster retail outlets.
Headlined “Go Places,” one of the ads reads: “Movies have taken us places beyond our imagination. Now you can take those movies places you’ve never thought possible with Silhouette Premiere-the first minivan with a built-in video entertainment system.”
The graphic is a drawing of Dorothy and Toto walking down the Yellow Brick Road, and a Silhouette minivan parked on an intersecting yellow street.
This month, Oldsmobile will send 1 million direct mail pieces to a nationwide list put together by The Polk Co. The names are of existing minivan owners, people who have expressed an interest in the category, and owners of competing brands.
Oldsmobile has used direct mail before, but in smaller, more regional campaigns, Langenhorst says.
The DRTV effort kicks off this month.
Oldsmobile has a Silhouette Web site (www.silhouettepremiere.com). Although the site doesn’t feature the test-drive offer, it does have a dealer locator, says Anne Ream, vice president and creative director at Leo Burnett Co., Oldsmobile’s agency.
Other elements of the campaign include displaying posters and running commercials in movie theaters, Ream adds.
At press time, a limited number of vans- some 5,000-were being manufactured. (The figure is expected to hit 40,000, similar to the production level of other high-end minivans.)
Langenhorst predicts the ads will help Oldsmobile sell about 4,000 of the minivans this year. In 1999, he looks for Silhouette to account for 10% of Oldsmobile’s minivan volume.
Maybe this effort, featuring an entertainment company tie-in and precise targeting, is a harbinger of things to come at General Motors. One observer notes that the giant automaker often uses Oldsmobile to experiment with new marketing concepts.
