Thursday and Friday of this week I participated in the Canadian Marketing Association’s Digital Marketing Conference.

Below are my notes from Day 1, first session. I should say that I was unimpressed with the first session but that the conference overall was pretty good and I met many interesting people. I’m going to lament the excitement of GM’s online marketing now, but I should also offer congratulations to them for actually trying this stuff out. Every marketing department can do better but you’re not going to get better unless you try things out, get feedback, then improve.

Changing the Conversation: General Motors of Canada is Driving Success OnLine
Frank Trivieri, General Director of Marketing, GM Canada

Frank is a nice guy. He’s the General Director of Marketing. But he’s not a great speaker, well he’s okay, but for the first speaker of the day, he’s a little stiff. Frank glowed about the advances GM Canada is making in the online space and he showed off some of the innovative ways GM is marketing online. But I didn’t think his presentation was a real, hardhitting look at the online opportunities. It was sort of old school does old-school marketing online. Sure there’s some fun, flashy stuff, but I thought it was a bit of a yawn.

That said, I don’t want to be hard on Frank or GM because at least they are experimenting with online. “Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from poor judgement,” as Ralph Hancox, formerly of Readers’ Digest, quipped in my MPub management courses way back when new media meant CD-ROM.

So what did I write down about what Frank said:

– GM has reduced their broadcast media budget by 20% (go deeper, I say)
– Between 2000 and 2006 GM increased their internet spend by 200% (either he’s got these numbers wrong or this is delusional excitement, only 200% ???)
– GM is interested in integrated marketing: they have banner ads on third party websites that allow the customer to interact with the banner without leaving the third party site. A user can play with a car and then send an email to themselves. Interesting idea that could be better implemented.
– GM is using in game ads — billboards that you can interact with in video games — ok, but again, could be better.
– GM launched some commercials that are meant to attract the “young, hip crowd”. These are the Johnny ads. “Way to go Johnny!” They’re kind of spoofs on Napoleon Dynamite, but in my mind they’re just annoying, whereas “Vote for Pedro” was not. My favourite quotes about this campaign, the website allows us to “interact with users in a fun, hip way.” “The target audience is made up of heavy internet users … [we] intercept them.” But I shouldn’t mock because GM is pleased with this campaign, which is a good thing. They’ve had 200,000 visitors (not clear if that’s monthly or since the site launched), who spend an average of 3.5 minutes with Johnny, and 10,000+ have gone on to find a dealership. When GM did a survey about the Johnny campaign, 74% politely said that the campaign increased their likelihood of buying Cheverolet. (I had no idea Johnny was Cheverolet, but whatever, I must not fit in the young, hip psychographic.)
– GM has an email program. They sent out 3.2 personalized emails resulting in 816 online leads.
– GM is advertising or sponsoring some news bit on bbtv (Blackberry TV).
– GM has a virtual advisor, again a campaign to use a medium and spokesperson the youth can identify with because we don’t want to approach a dealer in-store.

GM needs AdHack.com