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Published on 08/25/2006

Chevy Partners with MTV to Promote E85 Cars and TrucksBy Shane KiteForbesAutos.com

NEW YORK — Trying to match cool with eco-consciousness and turn a gas-guzzling image around in the process, GeneralMotors' Chevrolet launched an eco-friendly focused marketing campaign in partnership with MTV on Thursday, unveiling threespecially designed Chevy E85 ethanol-mixture-fueled trucks at Tavern on the Green in Manhattan’s Central Park.

Tim Rosta (left), senior VP of integrated marketing at MTV, an MTV-inspired "Moonman" (center) and Mike Valeria (right), Chevy's head of marketing for the Northeast region, promoteChevy's flex-fuel ethanol vehicles.

The trucks are part of a fleet of 60 flex-fuel Chevy vehicles set to ferry attendees to and from the red carpet on Aug. 31 at theMTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall.

The custom-designed trucks, with MTV VMA ’06 badges on the passenger and driver sides, link MTV’s yearlong “Break theAddiction” campaign with Chevy’s “Live Green, Go Yellow” effort. MTV and Chevy have partnered to promote ethanol as anoption for consumers interested in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and curbing dependence on fossil fuels.

Yellow refers to corn, from which most domestically produced ethanol is made. Flex-fueltrucks like Chevy’s can run on a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, hencethe E85 moniker. Ethanol is known for emitting less carbon than regular gasoline, and it can bemade using other renewable resources like sugar cane (Brazil’s method), switchgrass or agricultural waste. The farm lobby hassupported ethanol as a way to seek energy independence from foreign oil.

Mike Valerio, Chevy’s head of marketing for the Northeast region, helped unveil the three VMA-styled E85 trucks — twodistinctly designed 2007 Chevy Tahoes and a 2007 Avalanche — at the iconic Central Park restaurant on Thursday along withTim Rosta, MTV’s senior vice president of integrated marketing.

The VMA fleet of 2007 Chevy flex-fuel models is comprised of 20 Tahoes, 20 Avalanches and 20 Suburbans. Included in thatgroup will be a one-of-a-kind, specially customized Chevy Tahoe rendered by award-winning designer Chip Foose and theUnique Performance Concept Group, which will serve as chariot for one high-profile celebrity. Neither Chevy nor MTVofficials would reveal the celebrity’s identity. But Foose’s customized Tahoe garnered plenty of attention at Thursday’s event,along with a VMA-badged Tahoe LTZ and Avalanche.

A Chevrolet “fly-cam” will film aerial shots of the red-carpet arrivals in their MTV-pimpedrides at the awards. Chevy is also sponsoring a preshow "Top of the Rock" concert on theobservation deck on the 70th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center. All of it will air live on MTV,with real-time backstage action viewable live on the Internet for the first time at the MTVOverdrive broadband site. Comedic actor and part-time rock-n-roller Jack Black will host the show.

Chevy is launching its broadcast advertising campaign for the E85-capable lineup during the VMAs, starting with ads focusedon the MTV demographic — with spots on passenger cars with higher fuel efficiency ratings, including the 2007 Chevy Aveo,Cobalt and Impala. Valerio said the spots will then be worked into Chevy’s overall television advertising rotation, which willinclude the flex-fuel trucks.

Chevy is hip to the multiplatform content strategy, as well: The E85 television spots will be themed in tandem with a recentlylaunched Chevy website called reduceuruse.com, which will carry a tagline of, “How would you spend your time away fromthe pump?” In a nod to the YouTube.com craze, the site invites consumers to share and upload their own video clips ofactivities they would enjoy if they could spend less time at the gas station fueling up.

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activities they would enjoy if they could spend less time at the gas station fueling up.

Note that neither MTV nor Chevy is claiming ethanol is a panacea to environmental responsibility, fuel costs or geopolitics.Valerio calls GM’s promotion of its 2007 flex-fuel, ethanol-based cars and trucks an “interim” step to enabling consumers withmuch more eco-friendly, energy-independent vehicles in the future by other means.

“I don’t think anyone, certainly not General Motors or Chevrolet, thinks that E85 is the solution; it is not our end-game,” hesaid. “We have been looking at hydrogen fuel cells as the ultimate solution. We believe that there is no environmental downsideto that. So that’s where GM has really put its stake in the ground. E85 didn’t develop overnight. But it’s the interim bridge thatwill get us from here to there.”

Rosta agreed. “One of the things we always want to do, particularly with our audience, is raise the issues and raise theconversation,” he said, “and certainly to have a conversation about which alternative fuel source is better.”

This should make for interesting viewing during the original programming part of MTV’s “Break the Addiction” campaign,expected to run through to April 2007 and include a series of specials about the environment.

Rosta cited Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life, a show to air Nov. 24 that will place hip-hop starJay-Z in front of the MTV cameras as he tours the world, focusing in his off-gig time onspotlighting the need to find solutions to boost access to safe drinking water for those who lackit.

Rosta pointed to MTV’s ability and self-invoked responsibility in reaching out and informing its audience about societal issues,using both star power and straightforward news.

“We do consider ourselves a bit of a news channel,” Rosta said. “Our audience looks to MTV, and particularly MTV.com, toget a lot of its news and information, more so than tuning in to the nightly news.”

MTV says its global network of 50 channels reaches approximately 481.5 million households around the globe, a demographicany company or cause would be happy to claim as their own.

Visits to the channel’s website have increased, too. Posting the 2005 VMA awards show online after the broadcast aired lastyear garnered MTV 45 million page views on MTV.com the day after the show, plus 13 million unique streams in the following30-day period, according to Digital Music News. This contrasts with on-air ratings for the live show, which have been indecline since 2003, when 10.71 million viewers watched. Just eight million tuned into the VMAs in 2005, versus 10.3 millionin 2004.

The challenge for Chevy, Valerio said, is to change customer perception of its lineup, including its revenue-leading SUV andtruck fleet, by using high-profile spots like those on the VMAs. A 32-year GM veteran — 28 years of which were spent withChevrolet — Valerio came back to Chevy a little more than a month ago after heading marketing in the Northeast for four-and-a-half years for GM’s Cadillac division. He seems to know he’s got his work cut out for him. SUV and truck sales havedeclined much of the year at GM, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler. It’s unclear if the benefits of ethanol-spiked fuel can be conveyedin a way that will provide a tipping point for consumers to buy more Chevy trucks.

Plus, there are opponents who say that ethanol emits more nitrogen — a smog-producing substance — than gas when used, andthat boosting a crop-based fuel likely means more pesticide run-off, as well as the conversion of more acres to farmland. Theycontend ethanol could only partially alleviate the need to import oil, and then only if boosted significantly. Other critics saycorn subsidies would be better spent feeding the hungry here or in developing nations, versus filling the gas tanks of car-affording consumers.

Claims of better fuel efficiency via ethanol have also been attacked as erroneous, and due only to a Congressionally sponsoredfuel credit calculation which, some say, artificially boosts ethanol’s showings in the EPA’s estimated mileage or CAFE(Corporate Average Fuel Economy) fuel standards.

Valerio claims Chevy’s E85 vehicles are truly more fuel efficient, particularly when the flex-fuel system is combined with whatChevy calls active fuel management, in which four of the eight cylinders in vehicles so-equipped shut down during highwaycruising.

“I was driving an Impala with active fuel management — a V8 SS — and watching the dashboard, the information center. Iwent from 17 mpg to 28 mpg on the highway, and that was a real-world, real-time measurement.”

GM’s first fully hybrid SUVs aren’t expected until late in 2007, beginning with the Tahoe. As far as practical fuel-cellplatforms, Valerio says such solutions are not as far off as many estimate. “The packaging of hydrogen fuel cells is really where

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platforms, Valerio says such solutions are not as far off as many estimate. “The packaging of hydrogen fuel cells is really whereall the work is being done right now,” he said. “It’s getting it into a packaged size so it can fit into today’s automotive platformsyet still give people the 75-mile to 125-mile ranges they need for these vehicles to be practical.”

Whereas there is no refueling or fill-up infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cells, nor even publicly available cars based on thetechnology, there are several hundred gas stations spread over 36 states across the country now equipped with E85 pumps.According to the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition (NEVC), there are about six million E85-compatible vehicles onAmerican roads today.

The first E85 gas station to open in the New York metropolitan area will be based in theHamptons on Long Island: GM intends to unveil the exact spot with the NEVC next week.Valerio said he believed another station is expected to open in Manhattan’s midtown, as well.The NEVC, which has yet to confirm this, could not be reached for comment by press time. Sprague Energy will supply E85 atthe VMAs to the New York City Department of Sanitation, where GM will refuel the vehicles.

Valerio said he didn’t know whether or not flex-fuel will eventually be offered in every vehicle in the carmaker’s lineup, butthat GM was working hard to integrate it into the overwhelming majority of the portfolio. “I think you’ll see second- and third-generation of similar messaging promoting E85 technology,” he said. “Active fuel management and E85 give us the rationale topresent a very honest, very genuine, non-smoke-and-mirrors case to people and say, ‘Hey, you know what, if you if you need orwant to have these trucks as part of your lifestyle, you don’t have to pay a penalty for it.’”

The high-end trucks for use in the VMA fleet are not meant for straight-line marketing with the 12- to 34-year-old MTVaudience. They are simply required to transport attendees and their entourages to the show. But their presence at such a star-studded event can work to change consumer perception around the Chevy and GM brands. “The VMAs do that for us,” Valeriosaid. “It’s a great marketing strategy.”

Valerio says that Chevy now fully realizes that truck buyers, particularly families, are assessing more ethical and politicalquestions in terms of what vehicle to buy — in addition to considering more carefully the dollars-and-cents quotients of costsand fuel efficiency.

“Why else would people be buying some of the significantly more expensive hybrid technology?” he asked. “There’s no returnon investment associated with that, necessarily, but I think people are doing it because they believe in it. And if we can givethem a legitimate basis on which to build their own personal automotive philosophy, everybody wins.”

Photographed by Shane Kite for ForbesAutos.com

Related Links

• See more new Chevrolet models• View the Chevrolet/MTV slideshow• View MTV's Overdrive site• View Chevrolet's reduceuruse.com site

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