GM’s Chevrolet dumps ‘Chevy Runs Deep’ for ‘Find New Roads’ as it chases global sales

‘Chevy Runs Deep’ was the solution to reviving Chevrolet, by far General Motors’ biggest brand, chosen by now-departed global CMO Joel Ewanick and his initial agency choice Goodby Silverstein.

Now Alan Batey (left), officially ‘interim’ CMO but showing signs of getting his feet under the desk, has dumped that in favour of ‘Find New Roads,’ a slogan he thinks will energise Chevy’s engineers and marketers and reach out to a new global market. Around 65 per cent of Chevy’s sales are outside the US now compared to 27 per cent ten years ago.

Whether or not this will result in changes to Ewanjick’s revised agency arrangements – the creation of the Commonwealth agency consisting of Omnicom’s Goodby Silverstein in the US and Interpublic’s McCann everywhere else – remains to be seen. Presumably Commonwealth, whose board consists of Jeff Goodby and a gaggle of senior McCann creatives – played some part in finding ‘Find New Roads.’

One Ewanick agency that’s been keeping its head down is Carat, the Aegis-owned media buying network that was appointed to handle all GM’s $3m global media spend.

But Carat is presumably behind this wheeze to wrap Detroit’s People Mover public transport system in new Chevy Silverado ads for the North America International Motor Show in Detroit coming up next week.