There’s nothing really new about ‘Holiday Promotions” when it comes to the automotive industry. From President’s Day to Labor Day, the average consumer sees an endless string of sales and promotions that are designed to move more units off of dealership lots.
This relentless mindset has evolved further to integrate crossover marketing into its bag of tricks. As if appropriating our holidays, and twisting them into paid ad-space wasn’t enough, the automotive industry of recent years has been slowly forcing itself upon our entertainment as well. Strategic placement of their vehicles in our favorite movies and television programs has empowered automakers to barrage our viewing and social media newsfeed with even more ads for new model year offerings.
And now, it appears that (come Christmas) we’ll be getting the worst of both worlds, thanks to General Motors, or more specifically GMC.
If you’re on the elder cusp on the Millennial generation, a Gen-X’er or Baby Boomer, you might remember a simpler time. That’s right, boys and girls…before streaming, on-demand viewing, downloads, or even affordably-priced DVD box sets, there was a time that people had to (dramatic pause) wait for things. From your favorite song on the radio, to a re-run of a television episode which aired while you had other plans, we had to wait. And if we missed it, we had to wait longer. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? It does? Well, fuck you, you ungrateful live-streaming fucks…you don’t know our pain.
But the upside to this conditioning master-class on patience was the fact that it made certain things into TRUE events. You couldn’t DVR the Super Bowl, or the Olympics, or a Presidential Debate for later viewing! If you missed a “very special episode of 90210” well…you done fucked up, son! But for the youths of America, the single most anticipated television event of any year was arguably the seasonal airing of 1964’s Rankin-Bass classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” on CBS.
That’s right…”Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” might have grown stale to current children with its constant accessibility but, ‘back then’, you only one-chance-per-year to view it. And we viewed the f*ck out of it. Enamored with Sam the Snowman’s telling of the adventures of outcast Rudolph and Hermey the dental-obsessed elf, and terrified by the Abominable Snowmonster, we journeyed with them to the Island of Misfit Toys, all the way back to Chrismastown. And few characters gained our affection more than the “great prospector of the North”, Mr. Yukon Cornelius.
And now, building upon the success of the 2018 GMC Yukon, General Motors plans to release a Limited Edition 2018 GMC Yukon Cornelius for holiday car buyers. Based on the information released to date, the Yukon Cornelius will be released in two color schemes (i) Gold and Silver, or (ii) Silver and Gold.
According to Alicia Boler Davis, General Motors Executive Vice President of Global Manufacturing, “We couldn’t be more thrilled to release the 2019 GMC Yukon Cornelius, which is guaranteed to have more horsepower than a do-it-yourself iceberg. It will be perfect for transporting family, or hauling life-sustaining supplies like cornmeal, gunpowder, ham-hocks and guitar strings. Each Yukon will also come with a whip, and voice-command controls that are responsive to the word, Mush!”
We’re not quite sure what we think about this particular effort at cross-marketing, so while we decide, we’ll be over here…inconspicuously licking our giant icepick.
