ChasNote

Back in the 1950s, Buick turned cast-iron newspaper paperweights into ads. I have no idea how many cars these ad-weights sold (I bet Buick brand managers in the 1950s didn’t either), but — man — wouldn’t it be great to have one of these holding down stray papers on your desk right now??

More old newspaper paper weights at NYT.

From Ad Age:

“The world’s most powerful marketing executive is now the car czar…. Based on Advertising Age’s estimates of spending by General Motors Corp., Chrysler and Ford Motor Co., that would give the as-yet-unnamed car czar control over some $7.3 billion in marketing spending in the U.S. alone.”

Now there’s a guy I’d like to meet!

GM’s CEO told congress last week that among the bad business practices his company will change, if taxpayers cut the requested check, is an advertising mix that is out of synch with where GM customers spend their time. From a reader comment on Fred Wilson’s AVC:

“When quarried about their 09 expenditures Wagganer very specifically stated ‘We will move a SUBSTANTIAL portion of our ($500 million) advertising budget to online (Internet).’

Previously I was among the bail-out skeptics, but I’m warming up to the idea!

The New York Times has launched a sponsored content section in partnership with Chevy that brings together editorial stories from the Times archive featuring GM, Chevy, fuel cell and hybrid vehicles.

I love it. How could I not? It’s a full sibling of The Best of the Green Web site FM launched in partnership with Chevy back in May. I may love it even more, since it’s validation from the Gray Lady that conversational marketing — if done transparently and authentically — can coexist comfortably with the most respected ethics in journalism.

(Disclosure: The Gray Lady is an investor in FM.)

The crew at Business Week’s Blogspotting isn’t convinced that Chevy’s Best of the Green Web sponsored site is conversational enough:

“Chevy says on the site that it wants to start a conversation. But if that’s the case, I would expect the site to be all about the technologies that will make cars more fuel efficient and less damaging in terms of resources used and carbon dioxide emitted. And I would expect Chevy’s folks to be contributing their own news about what they’re doing.”

I don’t think Blogspotting spent enough time at the site. Here’s the comment I posted to the original story:

“I agree with your critique of conversational marketing where marketing brands don’t have a voice in the discussion. In the case of Chevy’s sponsorship of the Best of the Green Web site, however, they do have a voice. Chevy is providing its own news and updates on its fuel-solutions technologies — see the left column, just below the Recent Comments. The idea is to take consumer feedback, and to addressed it issue by issue. Even tough questions like ‘Aren’t you the guys who killed the electric car?’ Creating authentic media — whether it’s editorial media or media connected to a marketing project — is hard work, and success is defined by each reader or viewer. Based on traffic and repeat traffic to this site, and engagement with the content provided by Chevy, this experience is working for a fair number of green-minded consumers. At the very least, it’s a move by Chevy in the right direction, a move towards a more fluid two-way dialog with customers.”

You careful ChasNote readers may have seen this coming when you read last month about Chevy’s sponsorship the Best of the Green Web project (or Dell’s sponsorship of a green drawing contest in Facebook’s Graffiti), but now it’s official. FM has launched its Green Federation, a collection of the best green-leaning sites online, including Inhabitat, GigaOM’s Earth2Tech and the ViroPOP video network.

Here’s the press release.

ViroPop’s ZapRoot green-topics video program is now syndicating content on Best of the Green Web, the green group blog coordinated by FM and sponsored by GM’s Chevy brand.