Dmitriy T.M. sent in this commercial for Camaro (maybe not safe for work; men in speedos):
[The video was pulled from youtube, see update below]
According to the Huffington Post, this commercial was produced by GM and uploaded to youtube to promote Chevrolet Gay Days At The Movies in Los Angeles. I think it’s an excellent example of the new marketing mediums that have opened up in the last five or so years.
Ever since there have been products with a target audience, they’ve been advertised directly, and differently, to that audience. Most of us are unaware that the messages we are getting about a product are very different than the messages that other kinds of people are getting because we consume different media (Cosmo vs. Maxim, for example). We’ve documented some interesting targeted marketing by gender and sexual orientation (here and here). Camaro has long been marketed as a masculine car; I wonder how many people who have or love Camaros for that reason would be pleased with GM marketed directly to gay men (who, oddly, are stereotyped as effeminate instead of super-masculine).
But what is especially interesting here is how inexpensively and surreptitiously GM can do it. They make an “edgy” commercial on the cheap and upload it to youtube (no buying “air” time). And, because of the massive amount of content on youtube and the ways that networks work, they can be relatively assured that it will remain primarily within the gay male community and away from people who might feel pissed off, or even betrayed, at GM’s outreach to gay men.
If they get called out by their “mainstream” customers, they can pull the ad and apologize. They have almost nothing to lose because they’ve spent almost nothing on it.
See also our post on a new technology that allows targeted marketing on the street.
UPDATE: Well sure enough, GM ordered youtube to pull this ad. I was mistaken that the commercial was made by GM. However, they are sponsors of Gay Day at the Movies and had loaned the Camaro to Gay Day representatives who made the commercial. They have since come out criticizing it as “not appropriate and not in good taste.” So there you have it.
