PONTIAC SV6 GIVEAWAY ON "LIVE WITH REGIS AND KELLY!"

By Marty Bernstein, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Automotive News / January 31, 2005

Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa will award a Montana SV6 every weekday in February on their TV talk show.

Pontiac staged the automotive marketing coup of 2004 when it gave away 276 new G6 sedans during a broadcast of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in September. The automaker hopes to recapture some of the attention that gimmick attracted with a similar, if smaller, promotion. It plans to give away as many as 20 new Montana SV6 minivans in February on the "Live with Regis and Kelly" TV talk show.

The syndicated daytime program, hosted by Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa, attracts an average audience of 7.5 million U.S. viewers. Winfrey's show has an average audience of 10 million viewers. The Montana SV6 arrived in showrooms in November. Its base front-wheel-drive model sells for $25,235, including destination. Pontiac marketing director Mark-Hans Richer says the celebrity-oriented talk show provides a "perfect match" for showcasing the Montana SV6. Mary Kubitskey, Pontiac's advertising manager, says the promotion amounts to more than product placement because the show will integrate information about the minivan with its daily content.

The promotion began the week of Jan. 17, when the show's hosts provided daily clues to questions about previous broadcasts. Contest entrants who answered all five questions correctly became eligible for the daily minivan giveaways, which start Tuesday, Feb. 1. To win the vehicle, a contestant selected in each daily drawing must answer a question about the previous day's show. "This is a very popular show - we've always bought airtime," Kubitskey says of the "Regis and Kelly" program. "So this is a wonderful fit."

Adds Michael Gelman, the show's executive producer: "We've never done anything this big before." Clues and other contest information also are available at the TV show's Web page, liveregisandkelly.com. The SV6 contest, called the "extreme van-a-day giveaway," offers other GM products as prizes to daily contest winners. They include XM Satellite Radio receivers and service and OnStar communication service. Last year's G6 giveaway lost some luster when members of Winfrey's studio audience who won the cars discovered they would have to pay taxes on the vehicles.

For the Montana SV6 promotion, the TV show is paying the contest winners' taxes. The Pontiac promotion will run during a sweeps month - a time when TV shows stage special events to generate high ratings. Those ratings determine the cost marketers pay to advertise on those shows.