'Chevy Runs Deep' didn't run long
Reprints
Print
Respond
Chevrolet, which changed its advertising tag line last week from "Chevy Runs Deep" to "Find New Roads," has produced lots of memorable and pithy ad slogans over the years. But not all were winners.
The granddaddy of them all was the Dinah Shore ditty "See The U.S.A. In Your Chevrolet," used in the 1950s and 1960s. Other hits were "Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie & Chevrolet" in the mid-1970s; "The Heartbeat of America," used from 1987 to 1994; "Like a Rock," from 1991 to 2004; and "An American Revolution," from 2004 to 2009.
"Chevy Runs Deep" didn't run long; it debuted in 2010. Odds are that it won't join the pantheon of classic golden oldies. More likely it'll get lumped with a ho-hum group of short-lived Chevy shibboleths such as "It's Exciting!" (mid 1960s); "Our Country, My Truck" (2006-2007); "May the Best Car Win," (2009-2010).
In lean years, Chevy seemed to change tag lines with each model year: "Chevy makes good things happen," in 1982; "USA-1 Taking Charge," in 1983; and "Today's Chevrolet -- Live It" in 1985. In the early 1970s, when things were really tough, Chevy tried "Building a better way to see the USA."
Chevrolet couldn't revisit that theme in 2013. Compared to Dinah's day, Chevy is way more than a U.S.A. brand, and marketers have to think global.
"We are taking it on the global stage to the next level," said Alan Batey, GM's U.S. sales chief and interim global chief marketing officer. "We want "Find New Roads" to become for all of us our North Star -- something that inspires us and builds around that spirit of ingenuity."
We'll see.
