• by Karl Greenberg , June 17, 2014

Chevrolet’s soccer footprint is huge, including as it does major sponsorship of Manchester United, whose jerseys bear the golden bow tie. The company is also founding funder of the four-year-old World Futbol project, and brought ManU to Michigan as part of its sponsorship of U.S. Soccer. 

Now, Chevy is launching a raft of new ads for the Hispanic market under its global "Find New Roads" tag. The effort, tied to soccer, is via Hispanic agency Casanova Pendril. Comprising six new TV spots to air during Univision’s soccer programming, the ads focus on family and culture as well as on technology and vehicle features.

“Connecting with Hispanic consumers in a meaningful way is an imperative at Chevrolet,” said Paul Edwards, ‎U.S. vice president, Chevrolet marketing, in a statement. “Global football is deeply rooted with Hispanics and Chevrolet and is the perfect environment to launch our new approach.”

The ads tout Chevrolet's first-mover status in in-car 4G LTE technology, and show off vehicles that play strongly to Hispanic consumers: the Silverado pickup and Equinox crossover. The effort also furthers "What Do You #PlayFor" social campaign that Chevrolet launched in March around the Red Devils game against Liverpool. 

The automaker says the campaign includes a new spot by filmmaker Andrew Ellmaker. He came out of the Chevrolet MoFilm project, a partnership with the independent film clearinghouse that Chevy has been doing for several years. Ellmaker was one of finalists for this year's program. 

The short film, intended to show how futbol fandom is generational, will run in contextually relevant matches by Argentina and Brazil, per the automaker.

The automaker says that for the duration of the tournament, it will have a major advertising on-air presence on Univision, Univision Mas as well as Univision.com and UnivisionDeportes.com.