General Motors Decides to Pull Out of 2013 Super Bowl Ad Campaign by Vuk Bojovic

General Motors’ Chief Marketing Officer, Joel Ewanick, upset the public with serious claims that this company will not be a part of the advertising campaign on 2013 Super Bowl. It is a big question why did GM’s top management decided to make a decision like this, knowing that this single event is the world’s biggest advertising competition and the most expensive piece of TV material.

It is very surprising to see one of the biggest representatives in the science of advertising of the past few Super Bowls to just make a decision like this. Furthermore, past few days there has been a lot of polemic about GM’s announcement that “they will not continue to advertise on Facebook”. By cutting off ads from both Facebook and the Super Bowl, one must wonder what is the reason for this decision. It is true that the costs of these ads are enormous (especially Super Bowl, counting several million dollars for a 30-second video), but is that GM’s problem? GM has revenues that count billions and it seems that there is a lot more than just money plugged into this equation.

According to Ewanick, it is only the cost that forced this team of experts to make this decision. “It’s just getting too expensive, and we’re not just going to do the same thing every year,” Ewanick noted. He might be right in a sense that Super Bowl committee has been increasing prices every year, that were completely independent of the car manufactures’ sales. According to Wall Street Journal, “GM is the third largest Super Bowl advertiser, and has shelled out about $82 million on Super Bowl ad time between 2002-2011″. Also, Ad time for last season’s game in February cost about $3.5 million for 30 seconds, according to media buyers, and had risen about 59% since 2001, when a spot sold for roughly $2.2 million.

Despite of the price, many marketing experts will typically say that Super Bowl advertising is worth every penny. Main reason why this is happening is because it is not just this one big football game that draws a lot of attention; it is also social media and public critique involvement before, during and after the Super Bowl. However, GM’s biggest competitor, Ford, also argued about the “efficiency” of the Super Bowl ads. Ford’s CMO Jim Farley stressed that a brand can gain as much public attention throughout the social media and and other traditional ways of advertising, but for a lot less money.

One of the characteristics of this particular market is that companies are highly dependable on each other. When companies like General Motors and Ford make serious claims about withdrawing their ads from the Super Bowl, that will surely make others make moves as well. It is possible that this will affect Volkswagen, Toyota, Chrysler, Audi, Acura, and Hyundai, Mercedes, or BMW to put even more money into their ad campaigns around Super Bowl to insure the strenght of their brands, or might mean that they could pull out as well. Even though February is far away, we might see some announcements in the days that follow by some other car companies and their decisions on advertising for the 2013 Super Bowl.