Cadillac ATS Ads to Debut During Opening Ceremonies for Olympics

Cadillac views its brand new ATS as equal to or better than the best vehicles Japan and Germany have to offer. Now, Cadillac has the change to tout that claim during some of the best time slots for advertisers during the Summer Olympics in London. General Motors was planning to announce a major advertising campaign on Wednesday about the Cadillac ATS that will also make its debut on YouTube. The campaign is supposed to air on NBC during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on July 27.

The Cadillac ATS is very critical to the product lineup of GM because Cadillac is entering into the compact sedan category. The market is dominated right now by foreign brand Mercedes and BMW, so Cadillac is preparing for a major uphill battle.

“This is a tough segment,” said Jessica Caldwell. Caldwell is the senior director of pricing and industry analyst for the auto research site Edmunds.com. “A lot of people see the German foreign European brands as something more prestigious.”

GM is tipping its hand by creating a major marketing campaign that shows how important the ATS is to the product renewal for Cadillac. The product renewal for Cadillac began with the CTS sedan. Chevrolet and Cadillac are the two global brands for GM.

“Completely new from the ground up, ATS is Cadillac’s bold entry into the most significant segment of the global luxury auto industry,” said Don Butler, vice president of Cadillac marketing, in a statement.

The initial advertisements in the campaign will consist of 30 and 60-second spots for the vehicle and were designed by the Fallon agency, which is based in Minneapolis. The ATS is shown in a ‘cinematic adventure’ exploring the destinations of the ‘deserts of Morocco,’ ‘the streets of Monaco’ and ‘windswept Patagonia, Chile,’ according to General Motors.

GM is calling its broad campaign ‘ATS vs. the World’ and the new commercials are a part of the campaign. The spots were shot by Joe Berlinger, an Academy Award-winning director. Berlinger is also an auto racer. The spots were also shot by filmmaker Jeff Zwart. For the campaign, there have been 40 advertisements and online videos produced by GM. Some shots in the videos feature footage in the 3/4-mile-long Guoliang Tunnel in China.

Caldwell, from Edmunds, said that the ATS could be very welcome in China, where the sales of luxury cars continue to increase. The ATS hits lots late this summer and has a base price of $33,990. It offers highway fuel economy of 33 miles per gallon and was assembled at the GM Lansing Grand River plant.