Director of Pontiac Marketing
speaks on the Oprah-G6 marketing coup

Northwestern University-bred Director of Pontiac Marketing at General Motors Mark-Hans Richer talked to RBR/TVBR about their genius marketing effort with the new Pontiac G6, giving away 276 of them on Oprah recently (9/14 TVBR Daily Epaper #179). Continued from Friday.

Who approached whom on the Oprah idea? What was the initial pitch?

We approached them. The pitch was just like you said, Carl-a win-win. The pitch was we believe that we can do something for Oprah and her folks, and "it will be good for you, it will be good for us." And there was a moment where they kind of looked at us and said, "You'd really do that?" And we said, "You'd really do that?" We all just kind of sat there looking at each other, sort of like a Mexican standoff..."Really?" We just didn't know if they'd entertain the idea at all, we really had no idea. But in their own words, they felt it was the biggest thing they'd done in 18 years.

It was incredible, and think of all the free media coverage you got out of this.

It's amazing. We found out on Google this morning that Pontiac G6 is the #8 searched term in the country this [last] week. Oprah is the 6th most searched term. And I just saw my name written in Russian in another Google search we did.

Now that this seems to be one of the biggest thrusts of your marketing effort, what other media content are you looking to use?

We consider a lot of things, and obviously, you can't do this every day. Oprah is Oprah. But we strive for cultural impact. And cultural impact is--some people might call it buzz. There are a lot of ways to try to get buzz that aren't really culturally impactful. They don't become part of the dialogue. They don't have credibility. It's more like a sugar-rush buzz, it's not real substantial. But cultural impact, you can get in lots of different ways and that's what we seek to do. So I think when you see more of this from us, you're going to see many different ways of getting at the same strategy. I think you see the same types of, hopefully, impact.

The way you did this with Oprah was a complete surprise. That is also the strategy?

Yes, right, and there are more surprises on the way. It took us a year to work this out, it might be a little while before we're having another conversation. But I can promise you we will. It wasn't easy carting like eight truck loads full of cars into Chicago at night and not have anyone notice.

What have you heard from the local dealers? What was their reaction? Is local demand being driven from your efforts?

It's just basically rolling out now, we've only got 300 on the ground. But we're hearing a lot of anecdotal feedback from the dealers as to how excited they were. Which is always great, because we have a lot of great dealers and they're working really hard every day. And we are here to help them and also to help ourselves, obviously, because when they sell cars we both win. But the response back has just been outstanding. And then we started to get some emails in, like "All of our dealers report high activity on the G6 after the Oprah show. On Tuesday after seeing the show, a lady visited a dealer in Indiana and placed a deposit on a G6 GT that's in transit. She claimed she had no knowledge of the G6 prior to the Oprah show and that it is what drove her purchase intention. The vehicle she is buying is a fully-loaded $28,000 car in black. She's 36, married with children and a bank manager."

Eric Ronning of Ronning-Lipset Radio and I were discussing what's really cool about what you all did here was in any household, usually the decision to make a big purchase like a car is made 50-50. When one of the decision-makers is very charged up about a particular vehicle, the other often is swayed much easier. If you can get half of that equation, especially the female, you are going to move some product.

You are so smart! I'm serious-I've got so many questions in the last few days about, "Well, gee, but what about men?" Well, there's two points to that answer. One is well, we market to men also, through NCAA, motorsports, etc. But marketing to women is not just marketing to women. The woman in a household is a very influential influence. And we know this from automotive purchase behavior that usually they factor into about 87% of the sales. So clearly it is a two-person transaction and if a woman were to be excited about buying a really sporty Pontiac G6, I think their husbands would kind of like, "Cool! You finally came around!" They'd be excited.

CLICK HERE for the video of the giveaway.