No Detour Ahead for Chevy Marketing, GM’s Batey Says

Calling it Chevrolet’s “North Star,” General Motors North America President Alan Batey says there are no plans to veer off course from the brand’s 2-year-old “Find New Roads” marketing message, despite some criticism of it from an outgoing director at the automaker.

“It’s our North Star. This is core to who we are,” Batey says of “Find New Roads” during a sneak peek of the redesigned ’16 Chevy Cruze, which bows to the public later this month. “If we’re successful, it is something that should be alive 15, 20 years from now.”

So far, however, its success could be debated. In fact, outgoing GM director Nevill Isdell told Bloomberg last month the advertising effort has failed to raise consumer perception of the Chevy brand to the level of the new products carrying its badge.

Chevy sales are up 3.9% against an industry that’s ahead of last year’s pace by 5.8%, according to WardsAuto data. GM’s 4.9% year-to-date sales increase also trails the industry. The automaker’s 17.8% share of the U.S. market is flat with year-ago and down from 17.9% in 2013. Chevy’s 12.4% share is flat, too, and down from 12.5% in 2013.

But as with many things, Batey says, timing is everything.

“What you want to do, in an ideal world, is position a tagline and then bring it alive,” he tells WardsAuto. “We weren’t able to do that. It was just pure timing.”

And two years ago, Batey adds, Chevy was coming off its “Chevy Runs Deep” promotion, which while considered successful was also wed to the brand’s 100^th anniversary. It forced GM’s hand and the automaker launched “Find New Roads” without the desired level of advertising and new-product support. Chevy also was expanding globally into markets where it had little history and the nostalgic message of “Chevy Runs Deep” would have rung hollow, he says.

“We needed to make that move,” he says. “Frankly, there was just a time delay until we get here now and we are able to roll out it. Internally, we’ve been aligned on this. Externally we weren’t really able to bring it alive.”

Batey says “Find New Roads” has come to life through a new advertising campaign underpinned by television commercials featuring real people in lighthearted situations surprised by the look, feel and features of Chevy vehicles. On the product front, the brand has unveiled five redesigned vehicles for this year. Last year, it launched just as many.

Perhaps more importantly, he adds, the global Chevy team has taken on the message of “Find New Roads” into designing, engineering and selling its cars, trucks and CUVs.

“It’s the attitude and spirit, culture and values that we have that is driving what we do,” he says, referring to the message’s foundation of industry leadership and unexpected ingenuity. “That’s really the important thing.”

The executive refuses to share the U.S. sales and market-share goals GM has for Chevy, given the billions of dollars of product and marketing spent on this push, but he expects a reasonable return on investment.

Redesigned ’16 Chevy Cruze bows publicly June 24.

“We’re obviously at a pivotal point right now with so many new vehicles coming out,” he says. “But we are not building this product portfolio to sit still. We want to grow, and we want to grow sales and share. These products have been developed to be the best in their segments. I think we can do it.”

The new Cruze is one of those products. It is longer, lighter and boasts fresh, contemporary styling inside and out. Batey thinks it could challenge longtime segment leaders in the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic, which last year finished among the top 15 best-sellers in the U.S. and No.1 and No.2 in the Small Car segment with shares of 11.2% and 10.7%, respectively. The Cruze finished No.3 with a 10% share of segment.

“We proved, when we went from Cobalt to Cruze, that when you get the product right you can make a big jump and we showed that in the numbers,” he says, referring to the Cobalt’s rock-bottom segment market share when it went out of production in 2010. “With this car, I believe that progress can continue.”

It will come at the expense of the Corolla and Civic, Batey predicts.

“If we are going to grow, we have got to take that share from somebody and we have to take it from the Japanese because for decades they have owned and monopolized these segments,” he says.

The redesigned Cruze must also find more takers on the West Coast, where the Chevy brand is weaker than its Asian rivals but has invested heavily in revamping its dealer network for the product barrage.

The second-generation Cruze also will be more profitable than its predecessor, Batey suggests, and earn far more dollars than the old Cobalt, which had slid to 5.1% of its segment.

“Time will tell,” he admits. “A lot of this business is scale. It’s hard to make money when you don’t have scale.”

The new Cruze will follow on a first-generation model that sold 3.5 million units globally.

“Leverage that 3.5 million vehicle opportunity that you have, and then really have a winning product and people will pay more.”

[email protected]