Whoever wins the World Series Most Valuable Player award tonight will become another puzzle piece in Chevrolet’s new campaign to promote the 100th anniversary of its pickup trucks.
The MVP for the victorious Major League Baseball team in one of the most exciting baseball championship series in recent history will get to climb behind the wheel of a Chevrolet Silverado Centennial edition, created to celebrate a century of durability and of fulfilling the many needs and wants of America’s growing truck-buying public.
The Centennial Edition Silverado (above) and Colorado (below) feature a distinctive blue paint color, exclusive heritage-bowtie emblems of the Chevy logo and 100-year badges inspired by colors and design cues found on early Chevy trucks.
On the heels of another monthly sales report showing gangbuster sales of its Silverado in October, Chevrolet is putting some marketing muscle to engage consumers in the General Motors-owned brand’s century of trucks, whose modern workhorses are the full-size Silverado and mid-size Colorado.
Its customer-wooing effort includes three nostalgia-tinged TV ads and the U.S.-wide rollout of a new loyalty platform called the Truck Legends program. True brand loyalists can even show their pride with merchandise including a $1250 limited edition watch, which is made in the USA (of course).
“We see the centennial as a significant opportunity for us in the marketplace,” Paul Edwards, GM’s vice president of marketing for Chevrolet, told brandchannel. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate 100 years and certainly the anniversary of a rich, storied legacy of Chevy trucks throughout the ages. It’s an opportunity to connect with customers in a meaningful way.”
One TV spot uses archival footage from Chevy truck commercials going back decades. Another (“Names”) features the nicknames that real owners give their Chevrolet trucks.
A third, “Yup,” is a tribute to the laconic, not easily impressed truck buyer—all real Chevy truck owners, in keeping with its “Real People, Not Actors” authenticity platform.
Paul, centennials are always a big deal to brands—but do customers really care?
We know our truck people care. We’ve sold more than 85 million trucks and we know the relationships that customers have built with their trucks over the years, and with the Chevy brand. In the [new TV] spot called “Names,” you’ll see that come to life. That was shot using real people, and through their own words they bring to life their relationships with their trucks.
There’s no segment where they care more than trucks and here’s why. They buy trucks for dependability. They need them to last and work hard every day And the fact that we have such a rich legacy of dependable trucks on the road makes our owners proud. And it’s true what we’ve been saying over the hundred years in the “Then/Now” spot: Our owners want to be seen as dependable as the trucks that they drive, and that comes through in “Names.”
How else are you engaging customers in the centennial?
It kicked off in late September at the state fair in Texas. The first step was the two Centennial editions, for Silverado and Colorado, from the product standpoint. The next was rolling out our Truck Legends program, which we’d been incubating in the state of Texas over the last year and building the program so it’d be ready for this moment in time to extend it from one state to the whole country.
Truck Legends is a platform we’ve built for a deeper relationships with our customers. A significant part of our customer base have 400,000 to 500,000 miles on their trucks, or frequent purchases. It’s an effort to foster the communities with people with the deepest relationships with their Chevy trucks. We used that year to learn what resonates most.
What have you learned about your loyal customers through these efforts?
One of the interesting things is that there’s significant appetite among our truck owners to be part of the Chevy club. Since late September, with no paid media and little effort behind it, we’ve gotten 30,000 owners signed up to be part of the club. And the actual real people in the “Yup” TV ad were chosen from our real Truck Legends members.
Essentially what we learned is that our truck people want an even stronger relationship with Chevrolet. They like the direct communication and badge of honor for them. We haven’t had a Truck Legends platform in recent memory. We do Chevrolet owner gratitude efforts such as invites to auto shows and our publication but this is above and beyond. These are purpose-built platforms.
How will you leverage these insights to strengthen brand loyalty and word of mouth?
Direct communication is the most powerful. They appreciate hearing directly from Chevrolet and getting an inside look at news from Chevrolet. There’s also merchandise we make availbable to them, perks for being part of the club and getting their feedback. We want to use them to help build this program.
Perks include special offers for partners, different badging for their trucks, specially tailored merchandise that we make available to them. An example would be wearables—our truck people love to wear the bow tie. We have truck legends merchandise and centennial merchandise. It’s that special access to Chevrolet—shirts, hats and so on—exclusive stuff just for being a Truck Legend.
There’s value all the way around, with our customers themselves and value for Chevrolet because we get feedback directly from those customers. Also when we want to roll things out in the marketplace like centennial messaging, we can leverage authenticity and the relationships we have with customers. And if we do this right, they also become our advocates in the market.
How does the centennial marketing ladder up to the ongoing “Real People, Not Actors” campaign?
It’s very consistent. We’ve been on that campaign for two and a half years and it’s as strong in the marketplace as it has been. We try to disrupt the marketplace where there is an opportunity, like in January for the Lego Batman movie. We’re looking at the centennial as another big disruption opportunity for Chevrolet but in doing so stay very consistent with where we’ve been. Such as “Names” and “Yup”—they are real people and completely unscripted.
And the World Series MVP will get a Chevrolet Silverado Centennial. Also throughout the Country Music Association awards show next week, we’ve got an integration throughout the broadcast and purpose-built content that we worked with ABC on.
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