Cadillac wants to position its new ATS as a true global contender using an Olympics ad campaign.
The new 2013 Cadillac ATS will reach showrooms in the U.S. early this fall – but the big news could be the launch of exports to markets outside North America before year-end.
Don Butler, vice president of Cadillac marketing, said the exports initially will go to Russia, the Middle East and Europe. The introduction in the latter market should be particularly significant for the General Motors brand as Caddy has repeatedly tried to find a niche for itself on the Continent but so far found little success.
“The Cadillac brand is quite well thought of in places like Russia, China and the Middle East,” Butler said. “It’s in Europe where we have the challenges,” the executive acknowledged, describing the ATS as the most important car launched by Cadillac in a decade.
Smaller, lighter and more directly targeted against such vaunted competitors as the BMW 3-Series, Cadillac is boldly declaring its plan to take on the world in a new ad campaign that will be a centerpiece of General Motors’ broader presence during the upcoming London Olympics telecasts.
Molly Peck, Cadillac’s director of advertising and sales promotion, said the campaign’s objective is to show off the ATS in a variety of dramatic settings to demonstrate its capability.
The campaign, which took more than a year to plan and film, introduces the ATS via a series of dynamic short films in which the new luxury sport sedan placed on extreme roads and treacherous driving conditions in Patagonia, China, Morocco and the Grand Prix course on the streets of Monaco.
While introducing the ads this week, Peck said cinematic adventure takes the ATS into environments that showcases the car’s agility, driving performance and efficient design.
“Cadillac ATS vs. the World,” debuts online this week and includes 60- and 30-second television spots that will reappear on broadcast television during the July 27 Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in London.
The ads became available on Youtube.com on Wednesday. In all, 10 different commercials were filmed at four locations that will be used during the Olympic telecasts. The digital content by the crews at the different locations also will be used as content on a website dedicated to the ATS and offering more of a deep dive on the technical aspects of the car.
(Click Herefor a look at the new Cadillac ATS ad campaign.)
“It’s a giant content play,” said Peck, who noted that after the Olympics the campaign will carry over into other TV programming, print and digital advertising for the ATS.
Peck said the campaign includes short films, ads and photography, directed by Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger, and Jeff Zwart, an acclaimed automotive expert and filmmaker, “a directorial dream team to help us pull off a production of this magnitude,” said Pat Fallon of ad agency Fallon Minneapolis, which came with the idea for the spots.
The man behind the wheel in the new spots is Derek Hill, a champion race driver and son of Phil Hill, the only American to win the Formula One World Driving Championship.
American actor and filmmaker Ross Thomas hosts the series, which includes short films highlighting aspects of the ATS and the cultures of the locations featured in the challenges.
“Completely new from the groundup, ATS is Cadillac’s bold entry into the most significant segment of the global luxury auto industry,”
“ATS was developed to take on the world’s best sport sedans. So we designed a world challenge for ATS to dramatically demonstrate its all-new purpose-built chassis and advanced technology in a global, cinematic adventure, Butler said.
Cadillac clearly recognizes that it needs to expand its global presence, executives like Butler acknowledge, if the brand is to have a future. If nothing else, it has to gain the economies of scale of competitors like BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Cadillac has been gaining ground in China – where the maker plans to begin exporting the ATS next year.
A successful global launch for the ATS would set the ground for worldwide sales of the next new Cadillac offering, the completely redesigned CTS, which is due to market in 2014. The new version will move up-market from the current CTS line to more directly tackle the likes of the BMW 5-Series.
Paul A. Eisenstein contributed to this report.