Jack Bowen/Buick Motor Division/ClientJill Cooley/Buick Motor Division/ClientLissie Heinkele/McCann-Erickson/AORPeter Gaglio/I33/IPAOR The campaign’s goals were to launch the new Buick Rendezvous beginning in late June of 2001, generating national awareness and excitement among 35-49-year old “thriver” target with an annual income of $75,000 or more. In addition, the campaign needed to drive traffic to the Buick Rendezvous Web site and collect qualified names. The program turned away from a July primetime flight in favor of Screenvision cinema ads, both to maximize available dollars and to take advantage of strong summer movie viewership among the brand’s passion group. Research has shown that cinema audiences are much like that of network primetime viewers and Screenvision, the largest player in cinema advertising, has a comparable CPM to network prime. The big difference? Cinema media supplies a captive audience that is waiting to be engaged by what they see on-screen.To further ensure the plan would reach the target, the ads were slated to run at movie houses in larger, A & B counties during R and PG-13 rated movies only. Plus, the team chose creative featuring Tiger Woods (a popular figure with the passion group) in a more cinema-like execution.

The four-week, 1,000-location cinema media buy was complemented with a promotional giveaway. In the first two weeks of July, a Rendezvous gamepiece was given to ticket purchasers. The decoder gamepiece led the audience to buickrendezvous.com, which featured red-reveal technology as a sweepstakes mechanism. In-theatre signage was also used to promote the giveaway and the 60-second commercial. At the end of the promotion, one Rendezvous was given away. To blow this program out with restricted funds, the team negotiated a partnership with WB.com and sponsored the new release of the film A.I. online, with the cinematic Rendezvous spot running during the trailer. In addition, Buick dealers had the opportunity to hold in-market events in participating theatres. This resulted into a “big” idea integrated across mediums and disciplines driving both upper (awareness) and mid-funnel (familiarity/consideration) in a short time-frame. A minivan, an SUV and a luxury sedan all rolled into one, the new Buick Rendezvous is the ultimate crossover vehicle.

So the GM Planworks media team, working with Buick’s promotional agency, Momentum, set out to launch the vehicle with the ultimate crossover campaign, one guaranteed to cut through the clutter and generate the kind of buzz that would turn Rendezvous into a star among its 35-49-year-old HHI $75k+ “thriver” passion group™ target. (A “Thriver” is someone who balances life's hectic pace in order to live it to the fullest. They embrace new ideas and tools that enable them to satisfy their appetite for living well.) Faced with a relatively small primetime television budget and a summer launch schedule that coincided with the sparsely-watched summer TV rerun season, the GM Planworks team turned what seemed to be a disadvantage into an advantage. Following a June launch on primetime TV, Rendezvous did what everyone else does in July – went to the movies. Using :60 cinema ads featuring Tiger Woods, the team maximized available dollars, grabbed the attention of millions of individuals in Rendezvous’s “thriver” target and generated far more excitement for the launch than would have otherwise been possible.

To help turn awareness into action, the team paired the Screenvision ads with a Rendezvous promotion and an Internet effort, which drove traffic to a Web site and led to tens of thousands of qualified leads. An innovative vehicle deserves an innovative launch. And thanks to the teams at GM Planworks and Momentum, that’s exactly what the Buick Rendezvous received.Overcoming a modest budget and a slow month for primetime television, the campaign used an uncommon U.S. media outlet to pull Rendezvous out from the pack. Featuring an especially cinematic creative execution starring Buick spokesman Tiger Woods, the cinema campaign ran during July when the vehicle’s target audience traditionally leaves its TVs in favor of the movie screen.Combining that targeted, high-impact medium with a successful on-site promotion and a web destination, the campaign was able to make the biggest possible splash for a comparatively small investment.How big a splash? A total of 40 million people saw the Rendezvous 60-second spot in 1,000 theatres nationwide, leading to an aided ad recall of more than 65 percent. Ten million people received a gamepiece as part of the promotion, resulting in over 200,000 online registrants. Of those registrants, just under 40,000 wanted to learn more information about Rendezvous, while over 20,000 expressed interest in receiving more information about Buick. This resulted in over 500 sales, or a rate of 1.3% (one of the highest ever for Buick from a lead generation program).

A minivan, an SUV and a luxury sedan all rolled into one, the new Buick Rendezvous is the ultimate crossover vehicle.

So the GM Planworks media team, working with Buick’s promotional agency, Momentum, set out to launch the vehicle with the ultimate crossover campaign, one guaranteed to cut through the clutter and generate the kind of buzz that would turn Rendezvous into a star among its 35-49-year-old HHI $75k+ “thriver” passion group™ target. (A “Thriver” is someone who balances life's hectic pace in order to live it to the fullest. They embrace new ideas and tools that enable them to satisfy their appetite for living well.) Faced with a relatively small primetime television budget and a summer launch schedule that coincided with the sparsely-watched summer TV rerun season, the GM Planworks team turned what seemed to be a disadvantage into an advantage. Following a June launch on primetime TV, Rendezvous did what everyone else does in July – went to the movies. Using :60 cinema ads featuring Tiger Woods, the team maximized available dollars, grabbed the attention of millions of individuals in Rendezvous’s “thriver” target and generated far more excitement for the launch than would have otherwise been possible.

To help turn awareness into action, the team paired the Screenvision ads with a Rendezvous promotion and an Internet effort, which drove traffic to a Web site and led to tens of thousands of qualified leads.