Brand: Hummer (General Motors)
Issue: Hummer puts itself in Happy Meals, New campaign to dispel myths about H3
Commentary by: David

We often comment on the brilliant or foolish choices that marketers make, but we rarely get to talk about a major brand doing both simultaneously.  General Motors has accomplished the unlikely with the brilliant move of putting toy Hummers in Happy Meals and the foolish move of creating an advertising campaign intended to combat misperceptions about the H3.

What is Brilliant:
Today, Jean Halliday at Adage comments on General Motor’s recent move to put toy Hummers into happy meals.  The compelling logic for this is two-fold.  Financially, this licensing deal is a bright spot for the troubled automaker which is one of the most aggressive licensee for its brands in the automotive industry.  The second motivation is brand seeding, which allows GM to get the Hummer brand into the hands of future consumers at an impressionable age.  Matchbox cars have long had the same effect, but carmakers seem to be waking up to the potential loyalty effects of early brand building.

This advertising blog won’t comment on the moral issue of branding to children, the environmental questions about Hummer or the overall merchandising strategy for General Motors.  We do feel that this particular move was brilliant for an entirely different reason.  The brand positioning for Hummer is straighforward and extremely effective when executed properly: Hummer is a toy for grown-ups.  The irony of this promotion is that the Hummer already looks like a toy and is already sold like a toy.  Putting a real toy version of the Hummer into happy meals will not only influence children – it will influence their parents.  It brilliantly reinforces the brand positioning.

What is Foolish:
After a great breakout spot for the H3 (the ‘One Little Monster’ spot -  which we review here), General Motors has been stumbling in its campaign to market the Hummer H3 by its insistence on trying to make the H3 friendly to women.  As Gina Chon writes today in the Wall Street Journal, General Motors is now taking this strategy one step further, with an ad campaign intended specifically to refute misconceptions about the H3′s size and gas mileage.  This strikes us as a radically bad idea for several reasons.

First, GM is using precious airtime to argue with consumers.  Hummer has a bad reputation with environmentalists for a good reason – they are SUVs which are fuel-inefficient.  While it is true that the H3 gets much better mileage than the much larger H2, highway gas mileage of 20mph is nothing to brag about for a vehicle which will holds no more than a Volvo station wagon.

The bigger problem is that the Hummer brand team is trying to make the H3 a different brand from the H2 and ignoring that the real brand in the mind of consumers is Hummer.  The reason to buy a Hummer (as some of the Hummer spots effectively show) is to compensate.  If your life is too unexciting, the Hummer is a toy that adds excitement.  If there’s too little testosterone in your vegan diet, the Hummer adds aggression.

This is a single-minded message that works extremely well for the brand.  But General Motors is making an elementary branding mistake by trying to please everyone.  ‘More people will like us if they know the truth and then more people will buy’ goes the corporate mantra.  In reality, those predisposed to hate Hummer will not listen to the ad.  Those who like Hummer or might respond to the real brand message will be confused by this campaign.

General Motors must remember that it is okay for some consumers to hate Hummer as long as others love it.  Hummer has the makings of a cult brand and will find greater sales volume by narrowing rather than broadening its message.

Branding Bottom Line:
Hummer takes one step forward and one step back.  Much like General Motors.

Brand: Hummer (General Motors)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Guys who need a smallish SUV
Rating: ***
Reviewer: David
Description:
A Godzilla-esque monster wreaks a path of destruction across an unnamed city until it comes face to face across a building with a robotic monster of similar proportions. The two fall in love instantly, court to the song ‘Love is Strange’ and soon we see that Godzilla is a girl and pregnant. When Godzilla gives birth, it’s to a Hummer H3. As baby Hummer drives away we see the line “It’s a little monster,” followed by the announcement of the new H3.

What Works:
This spot works because Hummer has stuck to a simple brand positioning, trying very hard to own “Tough,” in the minds of mid-life crisis fathers who are yearning for an alternative to a minivan or conventional SUV.

This spot is a good example of using humor and storytelling techniques which reinforce the brand positioning rather than distract from it. (For a great example of a commercial where the story hurts the brand message, see Burger King’s new Coq Roq spots.)

Hummer is really trying to reinforce two important properties about Hummers here while introducing the new H3. In addition to “Tough,” this spot does a good job with “Unique.” And of course the product itself cooperates as Hummers are indeed tough and unique. Love them or hate them, everyone will agree on these two characteristics, which is a good test for the validity of the positioning.

Three things make this spot effective:

1. Engaging – This spot is engaging as a standard monster flick quickly turns into an odd love story. Because the story helps position the brand, the involvement that the story generates does not go to waste here.
2. Music – The music as much as the story creates the humor in this spot, allowing the brand to seem less pretentious.
3. Creativity pays off - The clever story pays dividends at the end of the spot when we see that the two monsters have given birth to an H3. This also makes the brand the hero.

All in all a nice job of building the brand with unconventional advertising.

What Doesn’t:
Hummer’s positioning is perilously close to Jeep’s which also trades on ‘tough’ but has more of a performance bent. General Motors is right to stress the uniquess of Hummer as the Hummer products are much more distinctive looking than the Jeeps. The quirkiness of the commercial also helps separate Hummer as it is not the sort of advertising that would fit the Jeep brand.

The big risk with this spot is that the brand remains hidden until the end of the commercial. This is necessary to maintain the dramatic tension in the spot, no question. However it leaves the spot open, at the end, to being memorable but losing the brand affiliation. This is something GM needs to watch carefully.

Branding Bottom Line:
Hummer does a nice job with the home video.