• by Karl Greenberg , March 2, 2015

General Motors' premium truck brand GMC, is making precision a point of differentiation in a new marketing campaign launching this week.

The campaign is also the first in years — since the company launched the "We Are Professional Grade" banner — to show the entire vehicle lineup, while also putting a headlamp on the high-margin Denali sub-brand.

The campaign, via AOR Leo Burnett Detroit, includes TV, digital, social, out of home, print, and regional elements. It centers on three TV spots in which the idea of precision is extended into sports performance.

The effort kicked off on March 2 with a 60-second spot, “Fastball,” featuring San Francisco Giants left-handed relief pitcher Jeremy Affeldt. The ad gets into how he “paints the corners” of the plate, to strike out a batter, a move called a “Rembrandt” in the baseball world. Shots of Affeldt pitching alternate with GMC exterior and interior vehicle details, including things like French stitching.

The second of the three TV ads features basketball forward Harrison Barnes, of the Golden State Warriors, whose precision move is a “swish.” “When you have that perfect swish, you hear the net and it goes right in,” Barnes said. “That’s precision, and it’s the best shot you can shoot. We’re always striving for that precise movement and pure shot.”

The third ad, focusing explicitly on the Yukon Denali, looks to fashion, with a guy's impeccable sartorial tastes a metaphor for the Denali's design and build. If you are a Who fan, the backing track will sound familiar, though you might need a second to place it. It's the rhythm backing from 1982's “Eminence Front" (a song that includes the line, “Will you come and join the party dressed to kill?”) 

Duncan Aldred, VP of GMC sales and marketing, speaking at a press event on the new campaign, said the effort and its focus on precision aims to shift the conversation away from category cliches around capability, toughness, and the usual truck performance attributes. He said GMC doesn't need to hammer those messages. “We have nothing to prove in this space. The problem is how can we really set GMC apart from this competitive segment? As the only premium truck brand in U.S. our challenge became how to get more people out there aware of our key attributes.”  

Aldred noted that GMC has had five years of consecutive year-over-year growth, accelerating to twice the speed of the industry over the past 12 months. The new campaign, he said, is part of a broad, 10-year strategy, of which building brand awareness is one of five main tactics. “Not everyone is that familiar with the brand. And not everyone knows that it is a premium truck brand.” He said the company is also on path to bolster the product portfolio to fuel share growth over the next several years, with 5% U.S. as the target. “And we are going to leverage the Denali sub brand, which has been an organically-built success.”

He says that with little paid marketing, the Denali vehicles represented one of every five GMC sales last year. The goal, he said, was to boost that mix to 25%. “We are making an historic investment in GMC; it almost doubles the [prior] investment.”