Filed under: General Motors (GM), Marketing and advertising

General Motors‘ (NYSE: GM) GMC had an ad on last night’s Super Bowl for the first time in years. It cost something in the neighborhood of $5 million to broadcast, and if you’re a GM stockholder, you might want to ask: why did GM waste so much money?

The ad (you can see it below) is a spare, black and white cartoon of a human figure rolling a massive boulder up a hill. The figure works immensely hard, pushing the rock for over 45 seconds — an eternity in Super Bowl ad time. Finally, he gets the rock to the peak of the mountain. Fade to a white GMC Yukon hybrid, which, according to the ad, gets 50% superior mileage than a regular Yukon.

There are a number of problems with the ad. First, it brings to mind Sisyphus, who in Greek mythology is condemned to push a boulder up a hill and then watch it roll back down, over and over again, for all eternity. In other words, to do something that’s both back-breaking and utterly pointless. And this makes me wonder, what is the point of squeezing a few more miles per gallon from a gigantic, wasteful truck? The hybrid Yukon gets a paltry 21 mpg — hardly worth celebrating. A better idea would be to just get rid of the thing altogether. Stop rolling that boulder up the hill! GM would be much superior off if it concentrated on making smart, fuel efficient automobiles rather than fighting gravity by trying to make a large truck perform like a Toyota Prius.

The other problem with the ad is that it is slow and offers very tiny by way of persuasion, either in terms of zany entertainment or sober fact. I’m not alone in this conclusion, since the ad is getting consistently negative reviews. Students at Northwestern rated the ad among the worst from the 2008 Super Bowl for both marketing and entertainment purposes.

You can take a look for yourself:

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising, News Corp’B’ (NWS), Business of sports, Headline news

Last night’s Super Bowl might have been the most watched telecast ever, according to preliminary data compiled by Nielsen Media Research.

Ratings for the contest between the New York Giants and New England Patriots were up 9% from last year. Figures for the number of viewers weren’t immediately available from Nielsen. The most watched program of all time was the 1983 finale of “M-A-S-H.” Until now, the most-watched Super Bowl was in 1996 when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Shares of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), whose Fox Network broadcast last night’s game, are down 18% over the past year as Wall Street worried that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire would be hurt by a slowdown in advertising spending and the Hollywod writers’ strike.

New York-based News Corp also is set to report fourth quarter earnings after the close of trading today. Analysts are expecting the media conglomerate to report earnings of 28 cents on revenue of $8.26 billion, according to Bloomberg News.

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson expects profit at Fox TV to have increased 62% to $181 million, helped by higher advertising sales, Bloomberg stated. Thanks to the Super Bowl, that business should continue to perform well for several more quarters.

The other big winner from the Super Bowl will be New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning and his brother Peyton, the Indianapolis Colts quarterback who lead his team to victory in last year’s Super Bowl. Peyton has become a ubiquitous Television pitchman since the game. There is no doubt that advertisers would probably give their left arms to have both Manning brothers endorse their products.

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