Chevy Touts Product Variety In Inaugural 'Find New Roads' Ad

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The 90-second commercial revealed a brand strategy that leverages the unmatched capacity of the Chevrolet product lineup to provide just the right rides for each of a long roster of demographic targets. And the ad doesn't even include Chevy's Silverado pickup truck, its bread-and-butter Cruze subcompact or a handful of other models.

Does it work? Of course it's too soon to say whether "Find New Roads" will lodge in the consideration processes of American car buyers more effectively over the long term than "Chevy Runs Deep." But at least three things are notable about the first creative effort out of the gate under "Find New Roads."

First, it's probably wise of Chevy to initiate the positioning by emphasizing the variety of its offerings in a year when a spate of  new-product introductions will be bringing constant reminders that the brand has even more going on. This could be a year for Chevrolet to pick up market share.

Second, Chevrolet might be taking a new tack with voice-overs in "Find New Roads" with their new guy, John Cusack. Tim Allen's intonations sometimes would almost dominate "Chevy Runs Deep" ads, with narration from start to finish. In this initial spot under the new campaign, at least, Cusack only comes in near the end.

And third: Couldn't this same ad have run a week ago during the Super Bowl? GM executives have said one reason they decided to stay out of the Big Game this year is that their new-product cadence grows heavier later in the year. But the spot titled "Dog & Doe" would have been right at home last Sunday, and with a much bigger audience.

In the ad, which aired during the first hour of the awards show on CBS, Volt, Spark, Sonic, Impala and the all-new Corvette Stingray each takes turns at wowing target viewers before Cusack ties everything together. Appropriate musical tracks back up each segment, and transitions appear as if they're being waved in on a smart-phone screen.

The spot opens with a robotic dog hopping into the backseat of a Volt, presumably to suggest that the car's plug-in technology will be mainstream in the near future.

Then it switches to scenes of fashionistas hopping into their Spark mini-cars, which are rendered in five different unique colors, with one throwing boxes from a shopping spree into the back seat.

Next up is Sonic, in a striped version that performs tricks like a skateboard as it careens through a warehouse district.

Then there's a scene featuring the overhauled 2014 Impala, depicting the car and its all-too-perfect, tuxedoed owner as the height of sophistication -- he, envied by neighbors in his all-too-perfect neighborhood, and the full-size sedan admired as the car arrives at a fancy soiree.

The final scene of the product sampler involves a new Stingray being used as a getaway car as its driver -- strongly resembling a younger Tom Cruise -- pulls stunts on city streets and freeways in an effort to escape pursuit by planes that look like a hybrid of a Stealth bomber and something from Star Wars.

The point, says Cusack as the spot draws to a conclusion, is: "Why just go from A to B when imagination can take you everywhere?" He ends by calling the Chevy cars "the best lineup of vehicles ever." And the ad circles back to the Volt's robotic dog nuzzling a real doe in a forest scene that evokes the car's considerable green credentials.

Chevy promises that each of these scenarios will be revisited in full ads for each car in the coming months.
