Find New Roads: Time Runs out for Chevy Runs Deep

Chevrolet pulled back the curtain on the more esoteric side of the marketing biz this morning, when the brand announced that it would be “aligning its engineering, design and retail operations behind a single vision and communications platform—Find New Roads.”

The “foundation of this new guiding principle”? Nothing less than “Chevrolet’s legacy of innovation and commitment to do the right thing for its customers.”

Yet surprisingly, despite that legacy, this will mark the first time that Chevy has used a single tagline/theme/whatever for its global operations. Of course, for U.S. industry watchers, the bigger news is simply that Chevrolet—which has long attracted attention for memorable taglines including “The heartbeat of America” and “Like a Rock”—is once again trying to recapture some of that old marketing magic.

The current “Chevy Runs Deep” tag is a carry-over from Joel Ewanick’s disappointing tenure as the head of marketing for General Motors, and while that may in and of itself be enough reason to can it, it’s also true that that campaign hasn’t been very well received by customers, either. Remember, too, that there’s an awfully big marketing opportunity coming up at the beginning of February that would fit right in with Chevrolet’s announcement that: “Find New Roads also will be used in advertising … beginning in the United States this quarter.”

That would be the Super Bowl, of course, and even though GM previously said it wouldn’t be advertising in this year’s game, that now appears like it may be a matter of semantics. The automotive blogosphere certainly expects the all-new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette to appear during the broadcast somehow—with Beyoncé, no less—and what better venue for introducing both Chevy’s new car and its new credo at the same time?