Silverado ads to embrace the family feud of pickup world

DETROIT — General Motors Co.’s new marketing chief, Joel Ewanick, said today that Chevrolet is preparing an ad campaign for October that captures the banter that happens when a Silverado pickup owner gets in the same room with the owner of a competing brand.

“There’s really two big camps,” Ewanick said of Chevy and Ford pickups. “We’re going to find interesting, creative and funny ways to take advantage of the fact that there’s really the Hatfields and McCoys.”

Ewanick said the campaign will encompass TV, print and online. He declined to reveal details of its scope or cost.

Ewanick said the inspiration for the ads was his own family get-togethers at which relatives and friends would rib one another about their trucks.

He said that since arriving from Nissan North America three months ago, he has been impressing on staff that GM brand owners have experiences with those brands that could be tapped for campaigns.

GM, Ford and Chrysler, despite losing passenger-car market share to foreign competitors, still dominate the U.S. pickup market. Through July, the Detroit 3 controlled 81.8 percent of that market, compared with 81.3 percent during the same period last year.

Silverado sales through July have risen 13 percent over the same period of 2009 to 201,446. Sales of Ford F-series trucks are up 35 percent to 290,794. The U.S. market as a whole improved 15 percent over the same seven months of 2009.

Longtime Chevy front man Howie Long, an ex-National Football League defensive lineman, won’t be involved with the ads. But other well-known personalities will, Ewanick said today in an interview.

The ads are being done by Campbell-Ewald, which is winding down its work as Chevrolet’s lead agency. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco is the new agency of record.

Goodby, which Ewanick employed as marketing chief of Hyundai Motor America, recently developed the latest Chevrolet Corvette sports car ad, themed “Still Building Rockets.”

Ewanick was Hyundai Motor America’s marketing chief for three years before stopping at Nissan from March to May of this year.

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