Claudia Pisarek's Marketing Blog

In his blog post, Dale Buss presents a new series of advertisements launched by Dodge. Dodge is advertising their new brand extension or as it’s said in the commercials “new member of the family.” This partnership campaign allowed Dodge to leverage the humor of Anchorman in order to help attract and maintain attention while the Anchorman franchise receives publicity for their new movie. Dodge uses a popular form of brand licencing by using a created character, in this case, Ron Burgundy.¹ The advertisement focuses on the demonstrating features in an easy, appealing instead of a direct verbal dictation of features such as this Chevrolet Cruze commercial. Furthermore, the advertisements affect consumers’ decision heuristics by creating an amusing and enjoyable product presentation. This allows dodge to be one of the first brands to appear in consumers’ retrieval sets. For individuals who are aware of Anchorman and find it humorous, fit into a psycho-graphic segmentation that Dodge can benefit from in selling this product.

What is even better about this campaign is the diversity is presents. There isn’t one commercial that is played over and over but a whole variety on their youtube page.

This campaign has evident results of success, as Dale mentions which is seen by the increase of sales by 59 percent.  Additionally, it is mentioned in the blog post that Dodge states there is an “80 percent increase in web traffic.” The large amount of short ads, conveniently located all together on youtube, provide all consumers, whether planning on purchasing a vehicle or not, to watch all the videos. This also provides Dodge with secondary information for their marketing research.

Overall, I think that Dodge’s brand liscencing of Anchorman is great marketing – truly enjoyable and effective.

Lastly, I leave you with my favourite of the commercials: “Gumball Machine” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxWAFOVrYKA

¹ Grewal & Lewy, (2013). Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.