Damon Henry: Internet Marketing Blog

General Motor’s Pontiac division has been, in my opinion, the best GM brand to integrate in-game advertising with traditional and online media. The Pontiac G8 “NCAA Game Changing Performance” effort is one excellent example of a sweet mix of traditional television, online video, and in-game integration (I’ll leave the exploitation of college athletes for later post).

At this point, I thought Pontiac couldn’t do much more with the cross pollination of brand and gaming until I flipped on the tele and saw the G8 Spy Hunter commercial. They’re really hitting it from every angle and it’s apparent who their target audience is. This is a brilliant idea that brought back some old memories and it seems to be resonating with consumers. “Research shows viewers are 30-40% more likely than non-viewers to purchase a Pontiac. All metrics have shown a 15-20% gap between viewer and non-viewer, so these consumers are very receptive to the message,” says Chris Hornberger, Pontiac advertising manager.

That being said, I was a little disappointed with the lack of attention to the search channel. Googling the term “spy hunter pontiac g8″ (can’t get any more targeted than that) does not return any natural of paid Pontiac branded content on the first three SERP’s. This concludes that no one thought to optimize the site for search engines and/or supplement the campaign with paid search for the most basic keywords. With Google’s universal search becoming more popular, properly tagging and distributing video is also a must-do, but I don’t see the commercial displayed anywhere in the search results.

I think it’s a great first step for the G8. I’d love to see the game available on the microsite or as a widget with inherit social functionality. Oh yeah, the GT version of the car is pretty pimp!

This entry was posted Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Video, Search, Advertising, Interactive. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.