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 marketing efforts, including the new Pontiac G6, giving away 276 of them on Oprah recently (9/14 TVBR Daily Epaper #179). Continued from Monday.

Has the Oprah G6 media blitz brought new opportunities to the table for Pontiac?

We've had a lot of people (business, media, creative partners) calling us, sort of thinking about Pontiac, which is nice. And we've made efforts to reach out to Hollywood and to some others, and we've been fairly successful with it. But now that they see the potential of things we're interested in and are willing to do-we'll go to that next level-that's opening up new relationships that we didn't even know about.

We've been working on another idea that probably, if we do it the way we'd like to do it, could be as big as this for next May. The creative partner that we're working with was kind of starting to get into a gray area where they weren't sure if they wanted to do something like that with us or not. And now, yesterday [last week], they called us back and said, "OK, let's get serious here. What should we do?" It was a very nice call to get.

Is there any way all of this is going to spin off into things with the local dealers?

I think from the standpoint of being respectful to Oprah, we have no wish nor do we have the right to, say, put up big signs with Oprah's picture all over them. So I'd say the limit to the dealers, beyond their natural enthusiasm and by hopefully taking advantage of customers' enthusiasm coming into their dealership sites, the 276 dealers that are going to be delivering the winners' G6's, I think, will have a very nice opportunity to sort of bond with the community and their local media outlets, and just kind of show their role in this. I think they are genuinely enthusiastic about this as not only a business opportunity but also an opportunity to do some good.

Is radio going to play a fairly decent role in your marketing efforts in 2005?

Well, we've been doing more radio this year than probably in any recent memory. In the last few months we've been on the air with a lot of GTO radio. It was only in certain markets. We are doing a partnership this fall with XM behind the G6 launch, that's a new thing for us. We haven't done that with them before.

How does that work, given they no longer offer inventory on their music stations?

No, they only have certain stations that do accept commercials-typically the talk and the News. The same feed from the TV networks, so they have to fill some space. It's a good environment, it's not very cluttered, great demographics and a terrific sort of subtle technological play in that the folks that are into buying XM have that kind of attitude, like to be on the edge a little more. And that attaches itself nicely to the car, and then of course we offer XM on the G6, so it kind of all comes around nicely.

Traditional radio will stay in your field vision as well?

Yes-I like radio. I've always liked radio. I think radio has a significant role in any car marketing. You look at OnStar-what a fantastic example of how you can leverage the medium so well. Every time you sort of discount radio, then you turn around and run into a Priceline or an OnStar and you realize you really can do great things with radio.

CLICK HERE for the video of the giveaway.