Mahoney seeks consistent Chevy message

DETROIT -- In the four years since General Motors emerged from bankruptcy, its bread-and-butter Chevrolet brand has cycled through four main advertising agencies, three promotional tag lines and a long string of marketing executives.

The result: a lack of consistency that left the bow-tie brand's identity fuzzy in the minds of consumers, says Tim Mahoney, Chevy's global chief marketing officer, who was hired away from Volkswagen of America in February.

"When you look at building great brands, it's about consistency, right?" Mahoney told Automotive News last week. "You don't change your tag line every three years. You don't change creative direction every two years. I'm a big believer in consistency and execution."

His ability to stabilize Chevrolet's massive marketing enterprise will play a key role in GM CEO Dan Akerson's plan to establish Chevy as a powerhouse global brand to rival Toyota and VW.

Mahoney, 57, arrived at Chevrolet on April 1 with a reputation for creative and offbeat marketing themes that have stuck at Subaru of America and VW. Subaru's familiar "It's what makes a Subaru a Subaru" tag line and its "Love" advertising campaign were hatched under Mahoney's watch and are credited with a role in the brand's red-hot sales growth.

At Chevy, Mahoney inherited the "Find New Roads" marketing theme, which the brand adopted in January, replacing the widely panned "Chevy Runs Deep" tag line. Mahoney, who was hired just six weeks after Chevy announced the new theme, calls it "a platform that has legs and can really stay with us for a long time."

Mahoney says "Find New Roads" already has been adopted in nearly all of the 140 countries in which GM sells Chevys. In recent weeks, he and his boss, Chevrolet global chief Alan Batey, visited Brazil, Russia and the Middle East to survey the launch of the campaign. They plan to visit China and southeast Asia this week.

"Find New Roads" is meant to convey "an implied promise of hope ... of optimism and possibilities," Mahoney says.

At Chevrolet's "zenith" in the late '50s and early '60s, it "captured that sense of freedom, and go anywhere, and anything is possible," Mahoney says. "That message is not only authentic and genuine to our brand, but relevant. Can you imagine the people in the Middle East? They're looking for hope and optimism right now."

Mahoney also wants to seek an emotional response from Chevy's advertising, which is apparent in new TV commercials for the redesigned Silverado pickup. A spot that debuted last week features a father taking his reluctant son on a camping trip in the mountains; another shows a rancher searching for a lost calf in a driving rainstorm.

Despite its recent history of choppy marketing, Chevrolet's global sales have grown for 11 straight quarters and are on pace to top 5 million units for the first time in its 102-year history, Mahoney said. Chevy sold 4.95 million units in 2012, which GM says makes it the fourth-largest global brand by volume, behind Toyota, VW and Ford.

Chevy's U.S. sales this year through August rose 8 percent to 1.37 million, although market share slipped to 12.8 percent, from 13.1 percent, according to the Automotive News Data Center.