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The U.S. auto market is starting to resemble Canada's Outer Banks, where fishermen are dropping bigger nets to catch fewer fish. Auto sales have hit record levels, but they are flat, and at least one maker is struggling to stay afloat. To complicate matters, car buyers are not the predictable species they once were. The proliferation of media outlets, broadband, video-on-demand and other digital technologies are giving consumers more control of the media they get, and the vast number of choices between and within media translates to less time glued to one channel. Consumers are not so much consuming media as grazing. All of which is putting media planning center stage. Consider that once, General Motors' Chevrolet division spent the bulk of its TV budget on one TV show, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, which ran from 1956-63. Today, with well over 200 cable channels, most homes have access to more than 60 TV channels."Once upon a time," says Betsy Lazar, General Motors general director of media operations, "content providers and advertisers controlled the flow of information and entertainment. Today, consumers choose from a larger media menu, and they're able to filter the content that's of interest to them, and filter out what isn't."The meandering media consumer would challenge marketers in the best of times, and the market today is anything but. In the U.S. car market today, advertising has become a fixed cost, as new-product introductions, incentive campaigns and a Darwinian struggle for market share demand more advertising spend just to sustain awareness, much less tout new vehicles and offers. Still, even as new technology offers enticing ways to reach consumers, network television, which commands the biggest audiences, continues to be where the action is. In spite of a system for buying network TV that marketers call archaic, automakers, the top spenders, are pouring money into the tube. Overall ad revenue for the big three nets was up 12.1 percent, to $11.7 billion last year, with most of the gains in prime time. In 2004, Merrill Lynch predicted 2005 would bring a further 7 percent increase in auto category spend, with most of that in network prime time. While marketers will concede that TV is a crowded market, they'll say in the same breath, it's where they have to be. Where else can a marketer seeking awareness for a new brand, car or deal, reach 20 million people in 30 seconds?Tom Somerset, account director at media agency Carat Worldwide, says that's especially critical for brands like Kia and Hyundai, his clients. "TV is a huge part of what we do to build awareness," he says. "But there's so much advertising on TV [for consumers] it's almost like going to a party with a thousand people and trying to remember all of their names once you get home. But does that mean you skip the party? No, you have to go."During the Super Bowl this year, no fewer than five automakers, including, for the first time, Volvo, advertised their wares. On an average prime-time evening, 31 ads make pitches for various cars and light trucks, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Last year, $7.4 billion of automakers' $11.7 billion ad spend was on prime time TV, according to TNS Media Intelligence.While marketers and media strategists like Somerset say TV will remain the repository for most of automakers' marketing money, how they use it will change. Automakers are employing a more holistic approach in which TV ads are related to the content they're advertising around, while the center of gravity is shifting slightly from TV to interactive media. Also, automakers are changing the ways they view the traditional TV landscape, something they say TV media sellers are not doing. Mary Carpenter, chief operating officer at GM's media planning agency, GM Planworks, says she believes the dilemma facing the industry is not the 30-second unit, per se, but the traditional siloed approach to media planning. "The boundaries of media types and dayparts are far less relevant than the boundaries of the media territories that define each plan," she says. Carpenter says this change in focus has resulted in a fundamental shift in how plans are constructed and implemented. "The days of the annual planning cycle are all but gone," she says. "Our plans begin with a broad strategic construct, but the specifics of the media mix develop over the course of the year as each major initiative is planned."Somerset says the other dilemma is simply reaching consumers. "If you were to sit on the shoulders of a consumer during the course of a day," says Somerset, "you could probably isolate 12 million opportunities to reach them, but only 12 where they would be receptive. The trick is to find those 12 opportunities. To that consumer—if you can bounce between media in the right way—you are everywhere and also in sync with the way they think." Marketers from the Big Three to Toyota and relative upstarts like Hyundai are launching campaigns in which TV ads are more aligned with TV shows and entertainment properties, and consumers are treated like participants instead of passive observers. Recent campaigns abound in which consumers are meant to act like racers in a cross-media relay, carrying the baton from one medium to another. Jon Cropper, formerly of Nissan's urban and guerrilla marketing program, now at Young and Rubicam, N.Y., coined the term "media splicing" to define just that kind of marketing ploy. As an example, he uses a campaign for Sprite in Finland in which a TV ad shows a scrambled word, with the message that the first person to unscramble it by instant text messaging would win a prize. "The very next ad, in the same ad pod, announced the winner," he says. "It was instant."U.S. marketers are trying similar ploys. General Motors' Pontiac division this month ran a Web campaign touting the G6 coupe by asking consumers to use their cell phones to take a digital photo of any G6 they see and e-mail it in for the chance to win $1 million. Toyota's Scion division ran a grass roots effort in which print ads had a tear-off business sized card with a see-through window. Consumers had to go online to a microsite at Scion, view the site through the card, then key in numbers they saw through the window to their cell phones via SMS (short-message service). Partly because of broadband penetration, which is close to 50 percent in the United States, the notion of video as purely a television technology has changed. "One of the things that's really changed is how we define video. We used to think in terms of the 30-second broadcast commercial," says Lazar. "Now we think of it as what video assets do we have and how do we deploy them. That leads you down a different path that includes 30-second commercials, streaming video on the Internet, and video-on-demand." Even on cell phones. When GM unveiled the Corvette Z06 in Detroit this winter, the company ran a live simulcast of the press conference. But it wasn't shown on TV, or even online. The unveiling was beamed to Vette enthusiasts with video-enabled cell phones. Last week, Nissan's luxury unit, Infiniti, launched a wireless promotional campaign via AvantGo in which Infiniti is sponsoring the "March Madness" NCAA basketball tournament. Fans can access the 2005 College Hoops mobile Web site to get Infiniti-branded game-day information delivered directly to their devices either wireless or via desktop.According to Scarborough Research, a New York-based media research firm, consumers who planned to buy or lease a new vehicle in the past six months were 33 percent more likely than all other consumers to engage rich audio in their Web research. Also, such shoppers were 35 percent more likely to tap into streaming video as they mulled choices. TV ads were meant to drive awareness; recent integrated campaigns have used TV to drive consumers online to play a game, view the conclusion of a story or compete for the chance to win something. Volvo used its Super Bowl ad to pitch a chance for consumers to go online and vie for a ride on the inaugural flight aboard Virgin Galactic's spaceship. In the 30-second ad, touting Volvo's first V8, the Volvo XC90, as having rocket-like power, viewers were asked to go to a Volvo microsite, www.boldlygo.com, with the winner to be announced this week at the New York International Auto Show. Buick last month launched an Internet campaign on AOL, promoting its product-placement on ABC's Desperate Housewives. The deal gave Buick exclusive sponsorship of weekly online recaps of the show, with Buick commercials "airing" online directly before the show recaps. After each Monday's episode, viewers can go online to watch four-minute recaps of the previous evening's episode, and over the course of the season, video highlights. Buick, whose advertising has been part of Desperate Housewives since the show's inception—one family drives a Rendezvous—had a starring role in a recent episode in which Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) pitches the car in a mall for a modeling gig.Cadillac, which wanted to promote its V-series cars, which go from 0 mph to 60 mph in under five seconds, launched a campaign last month that featured John Travolta in ads online at www.cadillacunder5.com. Travolta, reprising his Chili Palmer character from Get Shorty, promotes a five-second film contest. Cadillac has done a product-placement deal for the Get Shorty sequel, Be Cool. GM's ability to move quickly at the corporate level to find media placement for ads spun off from such deals is a recent development. Eleven years ago, GM had about 17 agencies handling media and creative for its different divisions, and each division not only fended for itself but vied against the others for media, driving prices up 10 percent or more, according to Lazar. Ten years ago, GM developed Mediaworks, to buy all of GM's media.Now, General Motors is continuing the move toward consolidation, having recently announced it will review its $3.2 billion media business, which pits GM Mediaworks in Warren, Mich., and LCI in New York against Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest, parent of GM Planworks. Lazar says the company wants all media duties under one roof. The goal is to streamline the media operation, "with greater focus on innovative, strategic media buying," she says. "We're doing this because we believe it's time to take a fresh look at our entire media buying operation, given the fact that the media landscape has changed so much in the past decade and our dealer client base (Local Marketing Groups) has grown dramatically."Planworks played a big role in Chevrolet's marketing against major music events like the Grammys, and the recently launched Chevy Live, a music Web site that Chevrolet marketers hope will be a destination for younger consumers who want to hear new music, watch videos, read regular journal entries from artists, and get updates on tours and music releases. Andrea Wells, executive vp and Chevrolet account director at Campbell-Ewald, Detroit, Chevy's agency, says her media strategy of "blurring the lines between media and promotions" has altered advertising and buys, and also gotten Planworks into the mix. "Two years ago we may have done the Grammys as a media buy only; now we look at is as a major promotional platform where we would be able to blow out extensions," she says. "You can almost think of Chevrolet, Campbell-Ewald and Planworks as the three-legged stool in the process."For example, when Chevrolet decided to do a music calendar around the Country Music Awards, Planworks' role was to negotiate media space in publications in which to insert the calendar. During the calendar shoot, the agency also shot video which was then fed to ChevyLive.com. Planworks also arranged a deal that got the same video content on Country Music Television for four weeks leading up to the Country Music Awards, says Wells. The channel's Insider program ran features on the making of the calendar and what it took for Chevy to prepare for its presence at the Country Music Awards, during which Chevrolet advertised versions of its "car carrier" brand spots featuring country stars like Big and Rich, who also appear in the calendar. Wells says the show, which aired Nov. 9, garnered its highest ratings ever. Between Nov. 1 through Nov. 20, Chevy Live had 85,152 hits, with 5,244 visitors installing the Chevy Live desktop player, a 6.16 percent install rate. Wells says this year, "We are working with music companies to get exclusive content you can't get anywhere else," which includes debuting some music videos on the site before they ever run on TV. She says the agency is looking to debut movie trailers on the site, too. Across town, Chrysler Group is finding ways of liberating video from TV spots, as part of its "Brandcasting" strategy (see Brandweek, March 14) to integrate advertising and promotions into lifestyle media. The company is in its second year of producing its own branded lifestyle TV show, Jeep World of Adventure Sports. The nine-episode program, which runs through 2005 on NBC, was produced by Chrysler and Aura360, a sports and adventure marketing firm in Portland, Maine. The show, which features action sports targeting young men, streams highlights on AOL.Jeff Bell, vp of Chrysler and Jeep divisions, says Chrysler is devoting 80 percent of its marketing budget to nontraditional activities such as branding in electronic games, test-drive events like Camp Jeep, and product placement ventures such as Jeep's association with Paramount's forthcoming adventure film, Sahara.For Chrysler division, Bell is mulling branded programming around golf. "We are starting to see golf not just as a sporting event but as a lifestyle," he says. "So, we are creating content with the Golf Channel and with CBS around our Chrysler Club championship." As an example of what Chrysler might do, he suggests a reality-type show that focuses on the amateur who won the championship and went on to register 24-under-par at the Bob Hope Classic. "Suddenly, that becomes a great story. It's engaging TV for Chrysler to pursue," he says. "We are creating content to capture the lifestyle side, perhaps for the TV, if not, for the Internet." The company two weeks ago did just that with an integrated effort, via BBDO, Troy, Mich., that built lifestyle stories around its spring sales event for Jeep. The effort shows real Jeep owners giving testimonials both in TV ads and online at Jeep.com/spring.Carpenter points out that traditional media markets like the upfront serve media sellers' efforts to fill ad pods, not media buyers' efforts to reach their prospects by matching ads and products with shows. Still, media conglomerates are trying to address that by creating more valuable cross-media packages for advertisers, at least the big ones, at the corporate level. Viacom Plus, which launched in October 1998, has developed cross-media programs with Nissan, Chrysler and GM over its seven years. The unit, comprising only seven executives, is headed by Lisa McCarthy, who concedes that a lot of what the group does ties back to boosting the effectiveness of traditional ads. "A lot of what we are working on is enhancing the 30-second spot," she says. "It's the basis of everything we do, and clients and agencies very much value that. How do we develop a marketing program, in a contextually relevant environment, tying a client's brand equity closer to a show or network's brand, a la MTV, or Spike? Something happens in content, something happens in commercial time, then there's something online, or via direct e-mail, that keeps consumers engaged in a way that goes well beyond what would have occurred if the 30-second spot just aired alone. But it by no means replaces the value of the spot itself." "That structure may not work well for advertisers that don't have a lot of depth in some of [Viacom's] other properties," says Mary Carpenter. "But we are a huge client of Viacom: we are huge in radio, outdoor, cable and TV, so sometimes we'll take an idea, or one of those entities will bring us an idea and we'll end up going back through Viacom Plus to help facilitate it." At Chrysler, which is tying in with the film Sahara both for product placement and an integrated TV and Internet effort, the challenge for changing the role of TV ads comes in part from an institutional resistance to shifting, sometimes radically, the media strategy. "It's been a learning process for all of us, I'll tell you that," says Julie Roehm, director of marketing communications at Chrysler Group, overseeing ad strategy for Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge. "I think it's human nature that whenever you see a curve ball, you want to duck."Since Chrysler ($1.6 billion in 2004) doesn't have the media dollars of GM ($2.6 billion), the company has altered its flight plan to focus media buying on vehicle models, each of which has specific marketing challenges associated with it. To develop that program, Chrysler's media firm, PHD, a unit of Omnicom, brought in Fred Sattler, former chief media officer at Doner, Southfield, Mich. (who joined PHD as executive vp and general manager in September 2004), to help develop a plan for buying media that focuses on each vehicle nameplate. "If I were going to pick the best general awareness medium, I'd put TV on top," says Roehm. "But it's not as good as other media for preference; and in a world where I can't cover the whole spectrum, we have to make tradeoffs."Says Somerset, "TV is still the party, no matter how you look at it. I know shares keep going down, and combined audience for cable has risen above [that] for broadcast, but that's 200 and some channels you'd have to buy to achieve those numbers."TV is still dominant," he continues. "Will it be in 20 years? I have no idea. But right now it's the party and you've got to be there. But what are you going to do at the party to make yourself stand out?"Marketers see television as a pillar of their marketing programs for the foreseeable future. But with more media channels vying for consumers' time and energy, the question, for marketers like Roehm, is how quickly television will adapt? "TV will always have a place, especially in building awareness for a brand new nameplate. My only concern for TV is that I wish it would evolve a bit quicker. I don't see it dying, I just believe there's an opportunity for it to be more interactive and not a one-way channel." Karl Greenberg is automotive reporter for Brandweek.

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