We couldn’t think of any and we began to talk about what a mistake that was.  We were able to rattle off a number of instances, where great automotive brands walked away from positioning or taglines that perfectly encapsulated their brands.  Mercedes-Benz left behind “Engineered like no other car in the world.”  Volkswagen threw away “Drivers wanted.”  Chevrolet moved away from “Heartbeat of America.”  A few months ago, BMW, one of the most consistent marketers in the industry, looked as if they were moving away from “The Ultimate Driving Machine” in favor of  “Joy.”  In the case of BMW, this has been hotly denied and “TUDM” still appears at the end of the ads but it has certainly been demoted.

Why does this happen?  Why does it seem so difficult for marketers to realize that they have a real asset that needs to be protected and nourished?  A lot has to do with the constant pressure to increase volume and the find something new to “take the brand to the next level.”  The other factor is the constant churn of marketing management and agencies.  New marketing leadership needs to demonstrate that it is moving the business forward and that means doing something new.  Every agency is genetically coded to do something “new and unexpected” to burnish their reputation.  Bringing back an old idea can also be seen as a copout.

So it struck me this morning when I read an article in Advertising Age where Joel Ewanick was interviewed and he said that Fallon (Cadillac’s new agency) had developed the brand’s soon to be introduced tag-line: “The new standard of the world.”

Here’s what’s fascinating, that slogan was developed in 1908, shortly after Cadillac won the prestigious Dewar Trophy for excellence in manufacturing.  The original line was simply “Standard of the world.”  The line may never have been a “tag-line” in advertising but it was certainly part of the company’s logo and therefore used from a marketing perspective:

This makes it different from Mercedes-Benz new global campaign, which uses an idea from the company’s archives,  “The best or nothing” (Das beste oder nichts). This statement was first written by Gottlieb Daimler but until now was not used for marketing, so they haven’t brought back an old idea.

I think “The new standard of the world,” admittedly with a slight modification, may be one time where an agency and its client has had the courage to look back and rather than reinventing the wheel (pun intended), acknowledge that something done before perfectly captures the essence of their brand and be willing to re-introduce it.

Good for them.  “The new standard of the world” already positions Cadillac more clearly than it has been in decades.  It will be interesting to see where they go from here.

Please comment if you can think of any other instances where an idea has been resurrected.

Brilliant work by Scali, McCabe, Sloves took Volvo from the choice of professors in tweed jackets to the boomer choice for family hauling. The Volvo wagon was a staple in the suburbs on both coasts.  Volvo was even featured in the movie “Crazy People” where Dudley Moore played an ad man who decided that being honest was a good idea and suggested that Volvos were “Boxy but good:

While the brand became part of popular culture and owned safety, it has struggled with that one-dimensional view for years. Volvo has its loyalists who love the brand and it’s products but it also has more than its share of detractors for whom the truth of “boxy but good” was a real barrier to purchase.  The challenge has always been how do you retain and nurture the safety reputation while also convincing a broader swath of the car buying population that the brand is cool and emotionally appealing.

This challenge is not exclusive to Volvo.  Mercedes-Benz and BMW have also worked hard to get “beyond” their reputations for engineering and performance respectively.  The fact is that all these brands represent safety, engineering, performance, quality and luxury at very high levels.  That said, when you’re lucky enough to “own” a reputation for one of the category’s real drivers, then it’s an asset you need to protect.

But it’s difficult.  In Volvo’s case they have wanted to be respected for more than safety and conservative styling because they needed to appeal more broadly to sell more cars.  Over the years they have improved the styling, offered a number of performance variants, expanded beyond sedans and wagons to include crossovers and convertibles.  Yet, consumers, their perception of the brand and sales have not responded in kind.  Part of the problem is that its safety position is so strong and so rational.  Safety is critical and incredibly important to consumers but it is also not cool or sexy.

I believe that when you “own” a positioning, particularly a primary driver, you must “speak” through that lens about other topics or you risk creating dissonance with consumers.  I think this is why Volvo’s efforts to convince us that they have performance credentials have seemed to fall on deaf ears.  Performance conflicts with our expectation of safety.

Recently, Volvo has been running a campaign that I think has found an appropriate “voice” that allows the safety brand to get into more emotional areas without confusing us. The idea that there is something called a “Naughty Volvo” allows the brand to go a little beyond safety without asking us to re-jigger our entire perception of the brand.  I think we all like and accept that people can be a little “naughty” from time to time without losing their essential character.  I think the same holds true for Volvo:

While I like the “naughty” commercials, particularly the ascending levels of naughtiness, I must admit that Volvo’s recent effort to isolate Europe’s “naughtiest” city really got me thinking about the brand a bit differently:

What a nice way to communicate that there’s something unexpected about Volvo. Throw a party in multiple cities with the car at the heart of it, invite all the right people, give them an opportunity to be a little naughty and see what happens.  A good combination of young, cool, contemporary, fun, a few good natured national stereotypes, and just a bit of naughty results in Paris being crowned the “Naughtiest City” in Europe.

What’s the point?  Everybody has a naughty side.  Including Volvo.

Got it.

Chrysler’s new ad for the Jeep Grand Cherokee first appeared about a month ago and seeks to stir Americans’ pride in our heritage as builders and innovators:

Chevrolet’s new ad for Corvette appeared last week on the All-Star game and draws a parallel between our country’s space program and the 2011 Corvette:

Some critics have gone as far as saying that Chevrolet should not have aired the Corvette commercial because it was too similar to the Jeep spot.  There are certainly similarities between the executions.

Both commercials try to connect contemporary products to historically relevant American values.  Jeep draws a connection between our heritage as a “nation of builders, craftsmen, men and women for whom straight stitches and clean welds are a matter of pride” and the Jeep Grand Cherokee.  Corvette draws a parallel between the scientists, engineers and visionaries of the NASA space program and those who built the 2011 Corvette.

Beyond the connection to American values, there are a number of executional similarities; for example, the use of historical footage and a narrative voice-over using a similar tone and manner.

It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that Jeep and Corvette should happen to have developed similar commercials, after all, they are uniquely American brands.  Both iconic in their own right and products of distinctly American ingenuity.  It makes sense that these brands would try to leverage their “American-ness.” Corvette and Jeep also have well-established positionings and stand for something in Americans’ minds.  Corvette is America’s high performance sports car and Jeep is the vehicle you can go anywhere and do anything in.

What I find most interesting, isn’t that these two great American automotive brands came up with similar commercials, but that one company chose to support its long-standing brand idea, while the other walked away.

The Corvette commercial clearly articulates Corvette’s positioning: unbridled, peddle-to-the-metal, all American sports car performance. “It’s nice to know that America still builds rockets” strikes a patriotic cord, but it is in perfect lock step with Corvette’s brand essence.

On the other hand, nowhere in the Jeep commercial do we see the idea that Jeep can go anywhere or do anything.  No notion that Jeep opens up possibilities that other vehicles don’t and represents that uniquely American sense of freedom.  Jeep is now emblematic of American craftsmanship, engineering and manufacturing: “the things that make us American are the things we make.”

So while we can debate whether or not the Corvette commercial is too similar to the Jeep commercial and whether or not they should have aired it, I think a much more interesting discussion is the wisdom of sticking with or walking away from an established long-term positioning.

Time will tell, but my guess is that Chevrolet will be glad that it aired the new Corvette commercial and Jeep less so.

“The newest generation of Jeep’s iconic luxury SUV can still rock-crawl with the best of them, but it looks a whole lot nicer doing it, both inside and out.”  AutoWeek  7/5/10

The new advertising is impressive and seeks to re-invigorate some distinctly American values:

Let’s face it, as Americans we are feeling a little down.  The worst recession in generations is a big part of the problem.  Nagging unemployment, a recovery that is sputtering and concern over the looming deficit are not helping.

So I think Jeep’s strategy of appealing to values we all hold dear makes some sense. What American isn’t proud of our heritage as a “nation of builders, craftsmen, men and women for whom straight stitches and clean welds are a matter of pride.”  We built the railroads, invented the airplane, built the Empire State Building, and created the original Jeep.

The idea that “the things that make us American are the things we make” strikes an emotional cord.  A cord that makes us feel proud, and right now a little pride would help.  The Jeep Grand Cherokee is something we can all be proud of because it was “imagined, drawn, carved, stamped, hewn and forged here in America.”

Powerful stuff, beautifully executed, leaves the viewer saying “yeah, bring it on.”

Only two things bother me about this commercial.

First what happened to the Jeep brand?  Where is the go anywhere do anything in a Jeep idea?  Isn’t that an essential part of the Jeep brand? AutoWeek seems to think so, in their review of the vehicle, they reference the fact that the Grand Cherokee can “rock crawl with the best them.”  I recognize that the vast majority of SUV owners never go off-road, but knowing that you can take on anything in a Jeep seems an essential part of the brand’s promise.

The second thing that created dissonance for me was learning that the Grand Cherokee was built on the current M-Class platform from Mercedes-Benz.

“A lot of the new five-seat, two-row Grand Cherokee chassis is shared with Mercedes’ next-generation ML-Class SUV – a byproduct of development that began under the DaimlerChrysler regime.”  AOL Autos 7/11/10

It turns out that the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee was “imagined” and “drawn” when Daimler owned Chrysler.  While I’m sure the Grand Cherokee was conceived and ultimately built in America, they chose to use a platform originally engineered in Germany.

Let’s not debate whether the advertising is factually accurate; I’m sure it follows the letter of the law.

The problem is that when you wave the flag in advertising and ask us to emotionally rally round it because this Jeep is American made, it feels a little smarmy when you learn that it’s not exactly the case.

Now that SAAB has shed the shackles of General Motors they are getting on with the business of re-building the brand.

Two weeks ago they announced (NYT’s 6/22/10) that they have hired a new head designer who has said that: “We want to return to the Saab DNA.” Just last week they announced (Media Post 6/29/10) that they were ramping up marketing investment, going back on TV and in print with a new campaign.

After years of being part of GM where the SAAB brand was neither appreciated nor nourished it appears to be getting it’s footing back. The SAAB brand has always stood for independence and a willingness to break convention.  SAAB has always had a devoted group of loyalists, some of whom played a vocal role in the brand’s most recent resurrection, PGM (Post General Motors).  Historically, SAAB has had all the foundation stones of a great automotive brand; a point-of-view, good interesting product, a genuine enthusiast group willing to proselytize, a group of loyal owners and marketing that conveyed its essential character.

As part of the GM stable of brands, SAAB’s essential character became a barrier to increased sales volumes.  “Different” didn’t mean special or unique, it became “quirky” or “weird.”  As we all know, very few people buy “quirky” or “weird.”  So SAAB product became less distinct, not necessarily bad, just less unique.  SAAB’s marketing also became more expected, more traditional.  Consumers were subjected to campaign after campaign that hung its hat on the idea that SAAB also makes jets…as if that was ever what the car company was about.

Last week this all changed.  SAAB started marketing in earnest again asking us to “Change Perspective.”   Here’s the European version of the television commercial (the US version is not yet on YouTube):

This commercial is like a breath of fresh air,  SAAB is returning to its roots but in a cool contemporary way.  Well produced, interesting to watch, the music is great (“The time is now” by Asha Ali) and it’s on strategy: “When you have a different perspectives on things, you don’t end up with just another car, you end up with a SAAB.”  Got it.

The website is equally as engaging as you learn more about SAAB’s perspective on driving, safety, power and fuel.  All seamlessly connected and speaking from the same position:  SAAB has a different perspective, uniquely Swedish, but relevant to the world.  I can’t wait to see the print.

Whenever you do something this fresh and different in the automobile business it will be subjected to the naysayers who scream for something more conventional. Can’t you hear the cries for more sheet metal?

SAAB should ignore them.

Well done SAAB, McCann Erickson Detroit and Lowe Brindfors.

I immediately thought to myself “Good for them.”

Infiniti from the very beginning has had a difficult time establishing a brand identity and finding a way to execute it in communications. Introduced in 1989, Infiniti was Nissan’s response to the introductions of the other Japanese luxury marques, Acura and Lexus.  The original Q45 was a sporty performance alternative to the Lexus. Unfortunately, Infiniti got off to a rough start when it introduced the car and brand with the infamous “rocks and trees” campaign created by its agency Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos.

The “rocks and trees” campaign sought to present Infiniti as the result of the unique Japanese culture and sensibility.  The campaign attempted to make its Japanese origin an asset, similar to the way that the German brands have used their ‘German-ness.’  The Infiniti ads were very different than any automotive company had ever done (they didn’t even show the car initially).  I still think the campaign deserved high marks for breaking new ground and attempting to make the fact that it was a brand from Japan important. Unfortunately, the campaign was panned by the automotive marketing community, blamed for anemic sales, resulted in the agency getting fired and ultimately resulted in a much more traditional approach to communications.

In the years that followed, Infiniti communications bounced from expected campaign to expected campaign without ever establishing a clear identity for the brand.  Infiniti was relegated to Tier II status in the US luxury market.  Tier I luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus are considered more prestigious, have higher levels of customer loyalty, higher resale/residual values and not surprisingly have better established brand identities.

It’s been unfortunate for Infiniti because they have consistently offered well-engineered products with some very distinct designs. The product has delivered on Tier I expectations but the brand’s reputation or image did not.

I was glad to see Infiniti stand behind its current “Brush-Stroke” campaign because for the first time since “rocks and trees” I think they are beginning to make the brand something special.  Here are some recent commercials:

And a couple of print ads:

The use of the Japanese sumi-e painting style is a nice way of connecting the brand to Japanese culture and sensibilities while adding a distinctive executional element.  I don’t find the tag-line “Inspired Performance” particularly, forgive me….inspired.  But it is clear and I get the message.  The brand’s Facebook Fan page and the Twitter posts are also consistent strategically as was their NCAA basketball sponsorship of “Inspired Performances.”   Put it all together and Infiniti is a uniquely Japanese performance luxury car with the full measure of technology and features that you would expect.

With this campaign, Infiniti is re-establishing its roots in Japanese performance.  I don’t think that this campaign is going to win any advertising awards (if that happens to be how you measure success) but I do think it is on strategy for this brand, and is well executed.

More importantly, if the manufacturer and the dealers are serious and really do commit to this campaign for five years I think they have a real chance of establishing a clear Infiniti brand identity and perhaps even making it into Tier I.

That conclusion has always bothered me.  I’ve always thought that Mercedes-Benz had a its own brand of engineering, it wasn’t always “better” than anyone else’s (although often it is), but I always felt it was “different” and therefore uniquely Mercedes-Benz.  It always seemed crazy to walk away from one of the four or five true category drivers.  But in an effort to “broaden” the appeal of Mercedes-Benz, they gave themselves credit for engineering and assumed that all their customers and prospects understood the core of the brand.

After years of neglect, it seems to me that the marketers at Mercedes-Benz are returning to the brand’s authentic roots and regaining their focus on engineering. Here are two commercials that have been on-air recently:

I’m not for an instant suggesting that these are the most innovative executions in the world, but it does seem to me that they are strategically spot-on for Mercedes-Benz. These commercials speak from the position of engineering.  The E-Class commercial references that it is the “9th generation,” the product of “50,000 crash tests,” holds the “world record for longevity” and is “technologically advanced.”  While you’re watching the C-Class roll over in a crash test you hear copy asking “When you buy a car, what are you buying?” a few factoids later you hear “the deeper you look the more you see the real difference and the more you understand what it means to own a Mercedes-Benz…the engineering of Mercedes-Benz.

Keen observers may have noticed that Mercedes-Benz has been running print ads with relatively long copy full of facts and rationale that supports their engineering positioning.

I can hear some ad wonks saying that they have seen these commercials before and that there is nothing new about a long copy ad.  I would argue that these commercials do a very nice job of establishing Mercedes-Benz as a very special car company with quality engineering at its core.  It may not be new, but neither is the brand and it will work, particularly with the new generation of luxury car purchasers who don’t know Mercedes-Benz as well as their parents.

While Mercedes-Benz is getting back to their core values, they are not living in the past.  Their efforts to reach this new generation of luxury buyers through social media with the “Gen-Benz” online community and another program called “M-B Advisors” demonstrates that the Company is listening and learning.  The traditional advertising may be well, traditional, but the folks at Mercedes-Benz recognise that to truly build their brand for this new generation they need to create a dialogue and a community around the brand in a whole different way (MediaPost.com).

Mercedes-Benz is doing a very nice job re-establishing its brand’s core values and teaching a new generation of customers what their brand represents.  If they keep this up, and perhaps restore “Engineered like no other car in the world” maybe we can take this great brand off the endangered list.

“The spot will set up a wider TV campaign featuring commercials about each of GM’s four surviving brands: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac.”  Automotive News, 9/10/09

The implication being that the brand advertising would clarify the brands’ identities. Almost three heads of marketing later, we still have yet to see an ad  or an idea that positions these brands clearly in the marketplace.  Three of the four GM brands have not put a stake in the ground telling us what they stand for (GMC is the exception and that work was done years ago).

Last week it leaked out that Chevy was going to have the tag-line “Excellence for all.” That idea has been roundly criticized as a strategy looking for an execution.  We used to describe an idea like this by saying its “strategy is showing.”  The point of course is that it lacks passion, emotion, bravado, something magical that makes you feel something about the brand, rather it’s as if research wrote the line. Chevrolet is truly one of America’s most storied and iconic brands, surely it deserves better.

Predictably the industry was quick to blame Publicis (Chevrolet’s new agency), I think that’s misplaced.

Ironically, exhibit number 1 in defense of Publicis is the new Cadillac campaign from Bartle Bogle & Hegarty.  Just announced yesterday, here are a couple of the commercials:

Nicely executed, nice music, mildly interesting to watch, but basically running footage. Certainly does not position Cadillac in a powerful way.  Another idea from another new agency that falls short of being something special.  There’s a pattern here folks.

BBH is one the smartest most creative agencies in the world.  They’ve done wonderful work for Audi in the UK so they understand automotive.  The New York office has done the work for Ally Bank (the old GMAC) which is very smart and very powerful.

So what’s going on at GM?  Two great brands in Chevrolet and Cadillac with scads of new, well-received product.  Two new agencies that are bringing huge levels of enthusiasm, smarts and creativity to their new client assignment.  And the result is….work that is “OK” at best and certainly doesn’t move the company any closer to clearly positioning its two best brands.

The good news is that on May 24th, GM’s new Vice President of marketing arrives and with him a new perspective on re-building these great GM brands.  Hopefully, soon after Ewanick’s arrival, we’ll be re-introduced to Chevrolet and Cadillac as brands that clearly stand for something…something we’d be proud to be part of.

After an incredibly tough 2009, consumers seem to be coming back.  For the first time in recent memory, Americans’ perception of domestic automobiles seems to be on the mend (Business Week 4/23).  Ford’s bet that Americans will buy smaller, fully featured automobiles looks like it may pay off.  GM’s product plan created by soon-to-retire Bob Lutz is leading a resurgence for the General.  Hyundai and Kia, supported my excellent product quality, have taken advantage of recessionary sensibilities and grown share of market.  Audi , Subaru and Mini have come out of the recession on a tear.

On the other side of the ledger, Toyota continues to struggle with recalls and concerns about quality.  This has led to unprecedented incentives by Toyota and the predictable response by competitors to match them.  So a good number of consumers who had been sitting on sidelines during the recession have come back to dealerships looking to for a good deal.  After 2009, it’s a relief to see traffic in the stores but at the same time if the incentives continue that will not be good for the industry long term.  In 2009, some progress had been made at reducing the use of incentives, but the moment Toyota jumped in to defend its franchise, that opened the floodgates again.

So the good news is that customers are returning to the stores, but are they coming back for the right reasons?

Coming out of a deep recession, it makes sense that price point will be critical.  But eventually, consumer confidence will return and what, other than price, do we want consumers to consider?  What will create preference and support higher margins?  This seems a good time to step back and evaluate the current state of our automotive brands and evaluate them against a new generation of potential prospects.   Our industry’s brands are not what they once were.

Many once great automotive brands have been allowed to slip into an amorphous state.  In the 90’s as manufacturers chased volume and sought a bigger share of the then expanding pie, it was no longer enough to stand for one thing, they needed to be more things to more people.  This led to communications that were less clear, less defined and the process of weakening great brands began.

If you doubt the veracity of this statement, look at the luxury segment of the category, Volvo, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Jaguar, SAAB were once clearly positioned brands that stood for something.  Many among us can still rattle off these brands’ core values.

• Volvo—safety
• Mercedes Benz—engineering
• BMW—performance
• Jaguar—design and performance
• SAAB—individuality
• Porsche—performance sports cars

For a long time the majority of consumers gave these brands credit for these values despite product and communications that seemed to go in other directions.  But now the problem has come to roost, there’s a whole generation of prospective customers that don’t know what these brands stand for, they weren’t alive when the seminal advertising that positioned these brands was running.

What to do?  Here’s a suggestion, form a small team of senior level marketing folks (independent consultants, agency partners) who are talented, understand brand building and the automobile business.  Make sure they are willing to commit themselves to genuinely understanding your brand in all its glorious detail and let them loose.  Tell them you want ideas that will clearly position your brand to a new generation of car purchasers who are a blank canvas.  Ask them to execute the idea across all media channels.  Ask for ways to use social media to create communities around your brand that take advantage of the enthusiasts who understand your brand so that their knowledge can educate the new generation.

Consumers are coming back into the stores, but most are coming back to get a good deal.  Manufacturers and their agencies need to re-build their brands.  With younger customers, they need to build them for the first time.  Incentives train people to buy based on the deal and consider the products commodity-like.

In a category where it is now difficult to buy a “bad” vehicle, the threat of commoditization is very real.  A strong desirable brand is the only thing standing between a manufacturer of differentiated products and a supplier of generic transportation.

Please let me know what you think.

I think it’s great that they have repaid the loan and are showing progress, but this PR/advertising effort seems a little misplaced. Does GM think that we’ve forgotten that the taxpayers provided another $43B for which the government got stock and now owns 60% of the company?

It’ll be one thing when there’s a public offering, the government sells it’s stake and gets its investment back plus interest. That will be something to crow about. In the meantime making a big deal out of the fact that they paid us back roughly 15% of what we put in feels a bit like they’re trying to “sell” us something.

Rather than “sell” us that they’re succeeding, just get on with it, and when they’re no longer Government Motors, bring in the marketing guys.

In the meantime, marketing should be working on clearly positioning their remaining brands. That will help sales and create value for the shareholders.

This Acura commercial is about crumple zones and their ability to absorb energy in a crash while directing it around the passengers ensconced in a safety cage.  It’s a nicely executed commercial that provides people with information that gives them confidence that Acuras are safe.

But it isn’t new and it certainly isn’t exclusive to Acura.  Many of us would say that crumple zones are “old news.”

In 1952, Mercedes-Benz received a patent for a crumple zone in an automobile.  Up until that point rigidity was regarded as the key to protecting passengers in an automobile accident.  The 1959 Mercedes-Benz W111 series included crumple zones and was actively crash tested by the company.

I can still vividly remember the first time I actually saw a crash test.  It was at the Mercedes Benz Safety Center in the Sindelfingen plant outside Stuttgart.  I was amazed at the devastation created by a thirty mile an hour off-set crash.  Right then and there I learned the value of a crumple zone.

Today, every automobile manufacturer uses crumple zones to make their cars safer.

Yet here is Acura, using their version of a crumple zone to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

If every car has crumple zones, then what’s differentiating about Acura’s?

Not much.

What is different is the context in which Acura judged the importance of the technology and its use in communications.

Rather than simply saying to themselves that everybody has crumple zones and therefore crumple zones are old news, Acura recognized that:

1. Crumple zones were no longer a staple of automotive communications. There was a period of time when you could read an ad from virtually any luxury segment manufacturer and inevitably read about the safety benefits of crumple zones.
2. One of the by-products of the recession is that consumers are interested in having factual information that helps them make informed judgements about the products that they buy.
3. There’s a new generation of car buyers who didn’t grow up during the years when car advertising was full of information designed to help you understand the benefits of automotive engineering.

Acura seems to have said to itself: nobody is talking about crumple zones, people want facts and information to rationalize their decision and there’s a whole bunch of new prospects that don’t know much about automotive engineering…good time to use crumple zones to build our safety engineering creds!

Sometimes I think we fall into the trap of thinking that many of our product based benefits are old news because everyone offers the same thing and we think that “everyone” knows it.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, exclusivity is not essential to strong communications and just because it has been done before doesn’t mean there isn’t relevant and powerful way to do it today.

Please comment, I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Everything “Old” Is “New” Again

By Curvin O’Rielly

In 1982, when I was a young creative director at BBDO in New York, I was asked to write an article about the automobile business for Magazine Age.

The article was well received. I even won an American Business Press award for it. The question is, has it stood the test of time?

Well, some of the details I included in the article are as dated as the wide ties we used to wear (the ones you’re saving, hoping they come back into style again), or the disco music we used to listen to (admit it; you boogeyed to disco), or the haul-ass iron we used to drive, the cars with more horsepower than their suspension systems and brakes could reasonably handle (unless they were well-engineered vehicles from Europe).

What’s still true about my article, unfortunately, is that the automobile industry is once again in deep trouble. This time, it’s poised at the abyss, owing in part to the economic tremors that came close to causing a complete meltdown. At the abyss, too, because it was smart (or so it prided itself) but then not smart enough. I mean, surely those at the wheel had to have seen all the danger signs on the road they were heading down, just as they had to have known they were racing toward a disaster of epic proportions.

That said, here are the observations I made 28 years ago, with some minor rewrites here and there.

•••

“Panic-Induced Mediocrity”

When I took on the task of writing this article, it seemed easy enough. After all, I’ve written hundreds of ads. Many of them long, fact-filled, carefully reasoned pieces of copy about cars. Labors of love, really. And who could doubt my personal involvement in the product? I’ve owned 18 cars in my life, including one just for racing.

The more I mulled over the possibilities, however, the more it seemed as if I’d only be giving the same critique of automobile advertising that everybody else does.

But then, on January 26, 1982, the day this article was written, I looked at my two morning newspapers. On page 4 of The New York Times business section was a news report headlined, ‘Auto Sales by Big 3 Down 14%.’ And next to a similar report on page 6 in The Wall Street Journal was a story headlined ‘Board of DeLorean to Discuss Finances; Auto Maker Denies Its Survival Is at Stake.’

One word jumped out at me: ’survival.’ Not so much for its use in the DeLorean Motor Cars situation or how it may relate to the rest of the auto business, but how it impacts automobile advertising.

Given the fact that the auto business is in the midst of its worst continuous sales slump in years, the threat of it not surviving is imaginable to some, though its demise is unlikely to ever occur. Nonetheless, the mere threat alone has caused some people to panic. Not hysterically so, but certainly with a degree of nervousness. And inarguably that nervousness has resulted in a certain amount of mediocrity in auto advertising.

To be completely fair, mediocre advertising is probably the least crucial factor of all the parts that make up the current auto sales problem, but mediocre advertising is also the only factor that is quickly and easily controlled.

What’s wrong, specifically?

• Marshmallow’ strategies that may have been appropriate when the market was booming but seem highly inappropriate now that the universe of car buyers is shrinking. More strategies need to be written with a ‘take no prisoners’ goal.
• Executions that look as if it’s business as usual; that don’t address the consumer’s current concerns.
• The visible hand of too many authors. Copy, in other words, that reads as though a committee of hacks wrote it. (And completely mangled it in the process.)
• A lack of adherence to the basics of advertising.

Let’s dwell on that last point. Advertising, the basics say, is no more than salesmanship in print. The job of art and copy is to tell consumers what a product is and why they need it or should want it above all other choices.

Facts should matter, but emotions should matter more, inasmuch as Mark Twain’s advice about facts and emotions was perfect: ‘Emotions are among the toughest things to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion.’

At the moment in automobile print advertising, however, the emotional part – creativity – has increasingly become the skill of ornamentation and copywriting the craft of obfuscation. The auto industry has a story to tell but the message isn’t coming through.

Go to any magazine and study the car ads. A good percentage of them are written as through a random recitation of available features constitutes a powerful sales argument. How many times, for example, have you read ‘rack-and-pinion steering’ in a car ad? Or seen the phrase ‘MacPherson struts’? Hundreds, probably. But can you explain the advantage of either of those engineering features? You can’t, can you? Neither can the millions of potential car buyers reading car ads.

And those aren’t the only empty phrases in auto copy. Here’s an assortment of other phrases lacking in horsepower, all chosen without bias from the current crop of auto ads: ‘automotive breakthrough of the decade’; ‘first-class opulence’; ‘quick-handling… road-hugging… responsive’; ‘nimble… easy to maneuver…  with a smooth, refined ride’; ‘escape to where you long to be’; ‘tomorrow’s technology…’; and so on.

Copy like this – copy written with blah blah, meaningless phrases – leads to erroneous conclusions by the reader, if they lead to a conclusion at all.

Graphic gymnastics has taken the place of substantive thought in art direction. Is ‘punk/nouveau’ anymore than a graphic gimmick? Of course it isn’t. So why such dependence on it? Why so many ads with silver as a fifth color? Why so many charts and illustrations against graph-paper backgrounds? Why are so many of the photos of car in ads presented in the same cliché-ridden poses? Is there really only one way to photograph a car? Only one angle to use? If an element of design isn’t contributing to the message, eliminate it.

These are tough times in the car business and, therefore, tough times in the automobile advertising business as well. There’s only one way to proceed: sanely.

In other words, don’t panic in the face of the enormity of the task.

Recognize that selling the heritage and value of, say, Chevrolet is infinitely more rewarding long-term than selling a model name like Bel Air, Impala, Biscayne – all names, by the way, that have disappeared. [Update: Chevy brought the Impala back.]

Recognize that there is a long-term. Invest in ideas. Good ideas survive bad executions, but the worst idea cannot be saved by the most brilliant execution.

Finally, recognize that ‘the way it’s always been done’ may have sold cars only because almost anything sold cars when everybody was employed, when interest rates were manageable, when ’sticker shock’ didn’t exist, when it didn’t cost so much to just live, and when the future didn’t seem so cloudy.

Further panic will only yield further mediocrity. And then the cycle will only escalate. Unless… well, unless something wonderful happens. Unless the people responsible for doing auto ads and the people responsible for approving auto ads begin to stand up, one by one, and say ‘enough.’

I, for one, am waiting for it to happen. It has to happen. Given my admittedly narrow perspective of the American economy, they have to do it or we’ll all be up the creek.”

•••

So that’s what I wrote 28 year ago. It was an innocent world then. Print, radio, television; those were our tools, along with our ability to find a valuable piece of territory for a brand to settle and eventually own.

Everybody in adverting has a favorite story about Bill Bernbach, the legendary founder of the creative revolution. Mine is the one, possibly an apocryphal tale, about the day Nathan Orbach, founder of the eponymous department store, told Bernbach that he had a great idea.

“I got a great gimmick,” Orbach supposedly said. “Let’s tell the truth.”

Maybe we need that now. Truth instead of hype.

Curvin O’Rielly is a branding consultant who lives in Saratoga Springs, NY. His automobile advertising credits include working as a copywriter on the BMW and Saab accounts, as well as serving as creative director on the Saturn business during its successful launch. He can be reached at curvin.orielly@corllc.com.

The Hyundai Assurance Program was a stroke of brilliance at a time when the economy and the auto industry were in a tailspin.  It basically gave consumers a no risk way to purchase a vehicle.  If you bought a Hyundai and subsequently lost your job, you could return the car, no questions asked.  Truly brilliant and it propelled Hyundai through the recession and out the other end.  Hyundai’s 2009 sales grew 8% and its share of market was up 1.1 points.  This performance earned it elite status as one of only three automobile brands (Kia & Subaru were the others) to increase volume in 2009, while the industry overall declined 21%*.

The Hyundai Assurance Program was an unqualified success in a tough marketing climate.  But now what?

Hyundai has a big challenge in front of it.  How do you take what was basically a tactic and turn it into a long-term brand equity.  The Hyundai Assurance Program gave consumers exactly what they needed when they felt threatened and vulnerable. As the the economy recovers and confidence returns, the Hyundai Assurance Program will lose some of its allure.  If you’re not worried about being fired, then you really don’t need the program.  Recognizing this, Hyundai extended the Assurance Program basically saying that we’re not out of the woods yet:

Pretty good job of recognizing that this “tactic” needs to be adjusted, but it’s still a just a tactic, a promotion.

Hyundai has done a great job designing, engineering and building quality products.  They also have priced them very competitively in the market place. Hyundai has been building a nice business based on terrific quality products at fair prices. Quality products and pricing are the foundation stones of a powerful automotive brand, but the folks at Hyundai are not quite there yet.  I think that what they do with the goodwill generated by the Hyundai Assurance Program will determine if they build Hyundai into a brand that occupies a special place in consumers’ minds.

This latest commercial hints at where the brand could go.  Imagine if Hyundai could be the automobile brand that “always has your back.” Great products at fair prices and a company that’s looking out for you. There’s a powerful brand promise.

The hard part will be keeping that promise and making delivery against it part of the fabric of the company and its dealers rather than just a promotional offer.  If they can do it, Hyundai will become an extraordinary automotive brand that has gone beyond product quality and price to forge an emotional connection with their customers.  This emotional connection will differentiate Hyundai and give it remarkable leverage versus Toyota and Nissan.  Getting the Assurance Program done was a critical first step, but what Hyundai does next will be telling.

* Sales figures sourced from Automotive News’ Data Center

If you haven’t had a chance to see the documentary “Art & Copy,” you must.  Last night I saw it for the second time and enjoyed every minute.  If you have worked in the advertising business or are responsible for advertising on the client side it is well worth seeing.

It’s a chance to see some of the most talented people in the agency business talk about what makes great communications.  Hal Riney, Mary Lawrence, Jim Durfee, Lee Clow, George Lois, Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein, Dan Wieden and others talk about what they think represents great work and what inspires it.  They talk about great ideas: Braniff’s End of the plain plane, Apple’s 1984 and Think Different, Got Milk, Reagan’s re-election campaign, Nike’s Just Do It and VW’s Think Small among others.

At the end, these people and the work leave you inspired.  You’re reminded that at its best, advertising can change opinion, entertain, move people emotionally and to action.  Great work respects people and treats them decently.  Great work can build brands, companies and value.  Great work is really hard to create, get approved and execute, but when it all comes together, it can move mountains.

Here’s why we should be embarrassed.  The automotive industry was hardly represented.  Bernbach’s original work for Volkswagen was deservedly featured.  Other than that, a few Volvo print ads, a Rebel spot from the 60′s and Honda’s “Hate Something/Change Something” from the UK gets referenced.

As an industry we have interesting, exciting, cool, emotional and sometimes wonderful products. The industry has been the largest advertising spender for decades.  Virtually every American needs at least one vehicle.  Buying a car or truck is the second largest expenditure the average American will make in his or her lifetime so they pay attention. Automobiles and trucks inspire songs, traveling by car has inspired books and movies.  The auto industry has shaped America, literally.

So, with all this said, when advertising industry luminaries are asked to talk about great work that has made a difference, the only automotive work mentioned is an almost 50 year old campaign for a little German car and a couple of print ads that are 40 years old.  As an industry, we should be embarrassed.  Where are the great automotive campaigns that changed not only the fortunes of brands and companies but also inspired people?  There have been some, but they’re old.

With a few exceptions, the automotive industry’s work in the last twenty years has been dismal.  A few ads and maybe one campaign have been great. Honda’s Cog and Hate Something/Change Something commercials from Wieden & Kennedy London come to mind. VW’s Drivers Wanted campaign (Arnold) will probably stand the test of time.

At a time when the US auto industry is recovering from a cataclysmic shift.  After a year when sales dropped more than 30%, we are now entering a “new normal.”  Sales will be 12-14MM units per year for the foreseeable future and competition will be extraordinary.  At a time when manufacturers need differentiated brands more than ever, most are weak.

Now is the time for the manufacturers and their agencies to do the kind of work that builds and differentiates brands, engages people emotionally and builds value not only for the companies but also for their customers.

Let’s do it now, so that people are inspired to buy our products.  We’ll all benefit, the manufacturers, the agencies, the economy and the customers.

That way when “Art & Copy II” is in theatres near us, the auto industry will not only be featured, but also held up as an example of greatness.

Please let me know what you think….

Virtually every automotive brand is global.  Not every brand is marketed in every country but I can’t think of any that are sold only in their country of origin.  That means that every manufacturer must be concerned with what their respective brands stand for in each country in which they are distributed.  Obviously, it is in the manufacturers’ interest to have their brands positioned in the same way from country to country.  Customers and prospects should recognize the brands no matter where in the world they come into contact with them.

Of course the real world is not quite this neat and tidy.  Brands have developed in different ways in different countries, so for some manufacturers it’s a challenge just to get their colleagues around the world on the same page regarding the brand’s core values.  In my experience we do pretty well when we concern ourselves with the strategic underpinnings of the brand, where things fall apart is when execution of the strategy is considered.

There seem to be two basic approaches to execution, each with its own set of plusses and minuses:

1.  Agree to the strategic underpinnings of the brand and let the countries/regions execute, as they feel appropriate.

• allows for local expression recognizing cultural and societal differences which creates the possibility of much more powerful/effective communications at a local level
• gives local management authority over one of their most potent marketing tools
• more difficult to police or manage centrally and opens the possibility of strategic variation market to market
• more expensive as each country will execute for their own market

2.  Implement a global campaign that is developed and approved by headquarters. Allow for language/cultural variances where absolutely necessary but otherwise use the campaign as approved everywhere.

• virtually guarantees strategic and executional consistency
• easier to manage centrally
• less expensive, lower production costs, lower agency fees (?)
• assumes that the global campaign is culturally relevant in all markets
• often requires lowest common denominator execution

In recent years it seems that cost cutting and the desire for control of the brand message have driven many manufacturers to adopt the global campaign approach (most recently, Infiniti has just launched a global campaign and BMW’s “Joy” is a global effort).  While it is certainly cost efficient and enables central control, is it really the most effective way to go to market?

I guess the right answer is “it depends.”  In Infiniti’s case, its business is best established in the US market and it is being “launched” in relatively new markets in Europe and around the world.  Infiniti is a brand desperately in need of definition and focus in the US, let alone the newer markets, so I can see the wisdom in finding a brand positioning that applies not only to the US but all the other markets as well and attempting to execute it consistently.  There’s still the risk of the lowest common denominator communications but perhaps given Infiniti’s position that’s an acceptable downside.

BMW on the other hand is a well-developed brand and while I’m sure that some markets are better developed than others, it seems that there is strategic consistency throughout the world.  The executions may differ from country to country but the essence of the brand is the same.  I’m also sure that from time to time a market “goes rogue” and develops communications that are off the plot as far as Munich is concerned.  In an effort to avoid this problem, I can understand the appeal of a centrally conceived and executed global campaign.  But centralized development and control makes no sense when it requires that a strategically correct, well-established and powerful expression of the brand’s core values be forsaken in favor of a global expression that lacks its leverage and power.

With the new global “Joy” campaign, BMW relegated “The Ultimate Driving Machine” to a throwaway in the last seconds of the commercial.  The good news, they have a global campaign that is consistent around the world, the bad news they walked away from one of the most strategic and well-known positioning lines in the automotive industry.  While I appreciate that “The Ultimate Driving Machine” was a US-only expression, it is an idea that has clearly positioned the BMW brand for thirty-five years and helped to drive sales to levels that were unimaginable when that line was conceived. “Joy” may be a step forward for the rest of the world, but it is a step back for the BMW brand in the United States.

Every situation is different but I think several principles should guide our approach to global branding:

1. The strategic underpinnings and core values of an automotive brand must be consistent throughout its areas of distribution. The essence of a brand should not change from market to market.
2. It is far less important that the execution of the brand positioning be literally the same in every market. In fact, tailoring executions to culture and brand experience in the local market (assuming it is on brand strategy) opens the possibility of more powerful communications.
3. A good corporate ID program should be in place and guide execution. Use of particular typefaces and basic design standards are critical communicators of an automobile manufacturer’s design sensibilities and adherence to them globally will ensure an appropriate level of consistency without impinging on local messaging.
4. The sharing of production assets (e.g. photography & film) wherever possible makes perfect sense. This will save a few production dollars and ensure a level of executional consistency that is appropriate.

Adhering to these principles will not yield the lowest cost solution nor will it result in a single global campaign that looks the same in every market.  What will result is a brand that is strategically consistent from market to market while allowing for local market executions that are powerful because they reflect the sensibilities of that specific market.

Rigid adherence to the objective of having a global campaign results in dumbed down ideas that appeal broadly and sometimes results in the demotion of a powerful brand equity idea like the “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”  Fortunately BMW, left the door open to bring back “TUDM”, I expect they will.

The longest running and probably best known automotive industry positioning line has been thrown in the bin in favor of “Joy.”  I’m conflicted. On one hand, I’m shocked and I really believe that BMW has made a horrific mistake, but on the other hand, there are aspects of this new campaign that I like.

“The new “Joy” campaign ‘is a big departure for us,’ said Jack Pitney, vice president of marketing for BMW North America. ‘We hope to really add some humanity to our brand’ and show the diversity of its buyers,” — Wall Street Journal 2/15/10

In fact, what I like about the commercial is the humanity.  It’s fun to watch people enjoying life in and around their BMWs.  To see enthusiast communities enjoying their passions together.  To see all kinds of people, some even like me, joined together by a common bond created by a car.  It is truly what makes great automotive brands great, that sense of being part of something bigger than you are.

What I hate about this new campaign is that they walked away from “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”  Admittedly, BMW didn’t quite say they were walking away and they left the door open to bring it back.  What I can’t understand is why walk away from “The Ultimate Driving Machine” at all.  If they wanted to add humanity, add it, but keep the long standing tag-line, there is enormous equity in it and nothing that I see in any of the recent “Joy” advertising conflicts with it.  The Ultimate Driving Machine is a core equity of the BMW brand.

The other aspect that I find wrong-minded is this idea that “at BMW we don’t just make cars, we make joy.”  I’m willing to give BMW credit for making “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” after all it is a car company with a storied performance pedigree, but you overstep when you say you “make joy” (can’t you hear the strategy wonks saying that “joy” is higher in the benefit hierarchy?).  You don’t, you make fine automobiles, the joy comes from the people who bring your products into their lives. Are we to assume that our lives will be without joy or somehow less joyous if we don’t drive a BMW?

Saying you “make joy” seems a little like saying you’re funny, you either are or you aren’t and everyone around you knows which it is. BMW doesn’t make Joy, it makes The Ultimate Driving Machine and that should have been more than enough.

In its quest to be “more,” BMW will inevitably become less.  Too bad, I thought they were the one automotive company that truly understood its brand.

Generally speaking I thought the advertising game within the game was just OK, not great.  Within the automotive segment, six manufacturers stepped up for the Super Bowl:

As I said in an earlier post, the tough part about advertising in the Super Bowl is that while the football game is the primary draw, the advertising contest comes in a close second.  As an advertiser you have to be willing to do work that will stand out and entertain because the very next day the “results” of the ad contest will be published in USAToday.

I always watch the Super Bowl hoping that one or more of the automobile manufacturers will break out of the category mold and amaze us.  Here’s my take on the automotive commercials, from best to worst:  

I think Audi was the automotive standout this year.  A lot of industry veterans would have lined up to say that advertising a diesel on the Super Bowl was a waste of money because Americans don’t like diesel. As they have done for the last year, Audi takes on America’s perception of diesel.  Audi recognized that Americans are interested in being environmentally responsible but at the same time find the “green movement” a bit over the top.  The “Green Police” was a nice idea with enough oomph to do well in the ad contest.

Volkswagen’s “Punch Dub” commercial was the second best automotive entry. While it was a little bit more of a traditional car commercial, I thought it was fun to watch and did a nice job of illustrating the breadth of the VW product line with the warmth and humanness that we’ve come to expect from VW.  The Stevie Wonder ending was a master stroke.

I know that Hyundai’s ads introducing the new Sonata will be criticized by the advertising industry as “expected.”  Despite being more traditional category commercials, I think that they did a good job of making specific points that communicated an overall sense of quality engineering.  Better quality paint than Mercedes-Benz and the idea that the car is “handmade”   spoke to quality while the film itself made the product look terrific.  These ads won’t win any advertising awards, nor did they do well in the ad contest, but they got their message across and the product looked great.

The Dodge Charger commercial was certainly a departure from the category norm, particularly for Detroit. Some have said that they thought advertising the Dodge Charger (high performance/in-efficient) seemed out-of-step with current societal sensibilities. Perhaps, but I was left wondering if the notion of the “hen-pecked” male was even more out-of-step.  I hope that there is a segment of the male population who will identify with this commercial and go buy a Dodge Charger to affirm their manhood.

I sincerely hope that Kia’s execution appeals to young families as intended. While entertaining, I found the commercial silly and didn’t learn anything.

Honda’s ad for the Crosstour seemed forced, although I got the point that it offered a a level of utility in a sporty package.

Overall, my take is that VW, Audi and Hyundai made good use of their Superbowl investment, the others did not.

There has already been plenty written about the impact of this on Toyota’s brand reputation.  It certainly is going to set them back, some pundits say it’s a “speed bump” for Toyota, others say the situation will effectively “kill” the Toyota brand.  I suspect that the “truth” will be somewhere in the middle, the Toyota brand has been damaged, it will take a good deal of time and effort to recover, but it will recover.

Rather than debating the current health of the Toyota brand, I’ve been thinking about the discipline of branding in the automotive category and what its practitioners can learn from Toyota’s experience. Certainly the need to manage the media and to do so in a transparent way is critical.  Time is of the essence, the internet can take your reputation and spin it out of control in a heartbeat.  Beyond the crisis management learnings, I think that we are seeing the danger of having a brand that is based solely on rational underpinnings.

Toyota’s reputation for bulletproof quality and reliability is a completely rational positioning.  Combine that with bland design and you have automobiles that many in the industry deride as “appliances.”  Consider your refrigerator.  It sits there, does its job remarkably well, demands no attention at all…unless it breaks and then it’s a disaster.  Sounds like a Toyota.  As long as nothing goes wrong with your refrigerator, you will probably remain likely to purchase the same brand again, if you have problems you will defect to another brand.  Ultimately, this is how Toyota will measure the strength of its brand…how many customers defect.

Unfortunately for Toyota, it is very easy for customers to defect from a brand that makes a very rational promise that is subsequently broken.  Bullet proof quality and reliability is a wonderful promise until you break it and you have nothing else to act as a backstop while you solve the product problem.

The backstop for some brands is an emotional connection and promise that is made along with a rational promise.  Volvo’s safety positioning is a classic example of both rational and emotional components working together.  Volvo certainly has all the engineering and technologies (rational) that support the promise of a safe car but it also promises us the peace of mind (emotional) of knowing that we’re keeping our loved ones safe:

Volvo is certainly not immune to product quality problems but their customers don’t immediately defect at the first sign of trouble.  Volvo customers will give their brand a break because they believe in their hearts that their Volvo keeps their family safe. Talk to anyone who has owned more than one Volvo and you will feel their commitment to the brand first hand.

Subaru is another example of an automotive brand that is built on both emotional and rational promises.  Nothing could be more rational than the benefits of all wheel drive but that’s not all that is at the core of Subaru.  Subaru promises to help people live their lives the way they want to and in return they “love” their Subies:

How about this for carrying the emotional promise of the Subaru brand to the retail level:

Subaru has certainly gone though a few rough patches from a product point of view but their loyalists have signed on for something bigger than dependable all wheel drive, they share an emotional bond with the Subaru brand and its community.

There are other automotive brands that have connected emotionally with customers. Mini, and Audi are good contemporary examples.

I think it’s interesting that three of the brands with strong emotional connections mentioned so far (Subaru, Mini, Audi) came through this last recession with strong sales and share gains.

Historically Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Chevy, SAAB, Saturn, Honda, Cadillac and others have had strong emotional components to their positionings.  Unfortunately, for these brands it seems less true today.

Toyota has never been a brand that people connected to in an emotional way. Toyota customers aren’t passionate about the brand, they have always been rational about purchasing Toyota quality and reliability.  When quality is lacking and reliability questionable, there is nothing left, there is no overriding reason to stay with Toyota.  In a category where quality and reliability have become virtually a given, consumers were well aware that they had options and they quickly helped VW, Ford and GM have an excellent January.

Toyota has proven something that many of us responsible for marketing automobile brands have always known…the most powerful and durable automotive brands are those that are clearly positioned with both rational and emotional underpinnings.  The brands that stand for something and connect with their owners emotionally create enthusiasts and tribes of loyalists around them.  These brands’ customers give them a break when things don’t go quite as planned.

Admittedly, no amount of emotional connection is going to overcome Toyota’s serious product issues, but I do think that it buys you time and gives you a chance to make “good” on your brand promise.  It also creates the possibility of your loyalists defending your brand, there seem to be precious few actually defending Toyota.

In the “new normal” US auto industry with sales in the 11MM-13MM range, the successful brands will be those that create an emotional connection with their customers.  The lack of this emotional connection has left mighty Toyota vulnerable and opened the door to its competitors, including Volkswagen which has unabashedly stated its goal of being #1.

It will be interesting to watch Volkswagen.  In Ad Age on August 24th, as their agency review was getting started, Tim Ellis (VW CMO) said:

“Our goal of rapidly increasing our volume in a mature market requires the Volkswagen brand to evolve into a more relevant mainstream choice,”

I hope that becoming a “more relevant mainstream choice” doesn’t result in VW making more mainstream (sic boring) products and losing the emotional power that the brand has historically leveraged.

After all, no one loves their refrigerator.

He posits that one of the issues with “branding” as a marketing discipline is that we lack an agreed-to definition, which subjects it to interpretation based on circumstances or agendas.  He closes by saying that agencies and marketing services firms need to more tightly define branding:

“If we don’t address this, we could be perceived as an industry made up of people who don’t know how to define what it is they’re not supposed to do.  As Grouch Marx would have told us, ‘These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.”

Leaving aside the issue of agency credibility, the automotive industry needs to dedicate itself to building or re-building its brands. Manufacturers who do will succeed in the hyper-competitive “new normal” automotive marketplace, while those who don’t will languish.

The automobile business has traditionally had a shaky relationship with the idea of “branding.”  Programs designed to define or position the “brand” are often perceived as the “soft” part of automotive marketing.  This perception is in contrast to the marketing specifically designed to drive traffic to the stores or in industry parlance “make the doors swing.”  Often manufacturers feel that they have to choose between “branding” and “retail” and more than often than not they choose retail.

I think that part of the problem with the discussion of “branding” in the automobile business is that it most often devolves into a discussion of advertising, as in “this is a brand ad, that is a retail ad.” Brand ads are the ones that attempt to speak to a company’s “values” whereas retail ads feature “product, place and price.”  This either/or conversation is specious and has led the industry to it’s current situation, products that are perceived more like commodities and customers who focus on pricing.

Let’s be clear, in the “new normal” automotive market the traditional brand vs. retail discussion is a path to commodity status, decreased sales, decreased profitability and the loss of already weak brand equities.  The truth is, every successful automotive competitor will do both jobs, build brand leverage and make the doors swing.

The marketing conversation needs to start in a different place and I agree that it needs to start with a definition of what we mean by “brand.” While I’m sure there are more complicated answers to the brand definition question, I would like to suggest that the automobile industry would be well served by a simple approach.  A great automotive brand is a promise made and kept.

Nothing new here, right?  The idea that a brand is a promise made and kept is as old as the hills.  Defining what we mean by brand is pretty straightforward, the hard part is figuring out what a particular brand’s promise(s) is/could be and then making sure that it is “kept” at every consumer touch point consitently over many years.

Certainly the execution of a brand promise is more complex than ever, there are literally thousands of consumer touch points (ranging from the internet all the way through to the dealer salesperson). That’s why it is so critical to make a commitment to a promise(s) and not waver from it.  Our industry has several notable brands that lost sight of their promise and have been forever weakened (Volvo is a great example, even mighty Mercedes-Benz is not as well defined as it once was).

Toyota is currently battling a product quality issue that has resulted in recalls and the extraordinary step of stopping production and sales of eight models.   This is an assault on Toyota’s promise of quality and reliability.  How Toyota handles these recalls will define their brand going forward, will they handle their customers in a high quality, trustworthy (reliable) fashion?  If they do, they will build their brand, if they don’t they will break their promise to their customers and the brand will be weakened.

The brand promise should drive everyones’ behavior, from the dealer’s Service Tech all the way to the CEO (including agencies and other vendors).  Everyone is responsible for representing the promise and keeping it.  Of course, marketing must be charged with making the promise clear and demonstrating that it is kept.  All of this is easy to say and very difficult to implement given the overwhelmingly complex marketing environment we all operate in.

But it is impossible to implement if the brand’s promise changes or is subject to revision based on short term needs.  The automotive industry is guilty of thinking that its brand promises are adjustable. This is like saying to your angry significant other whom you told that you would be home at 7pm and you’re 45 minutes late: “I didn’t really mean 7pm, I meant around 7pm so I’m really not late.”

Promises consistently made and kept build trust, promises broken destroy cedibility.  Automobile manufacturers need to get clear about the promises their brands are making and then create alignment with all constituents responsible for keeping the promise.

The companies that dedicate themselves to making a brand promise and keeping it will be the long-term winners in the “new normal” automotive marketplace.  Those that don’t will be destined to commodity status with pricing as the only differentiator.

Lexus is concerned that their customers are too old and they are not appealing to the next generation of luxury car buyers.  A reasonable concern.

Lexus appears to be addressing this concern in the usual way that automobile manufacturers do.

First,  you add product to your line-up that is designed to meet the requirements or interests of the new target group (after all, they’re very different from the current customers),  then you lower the cost of entry into your franchise (they don’t have as much money as the current customers) and finally use marketing to convince the younger target that your brand is cool (at least cooler than they think it is).

Unfortunately, this approach always has the same result, you may succeed in selling a few more cars to the new target group but you leave your current customers confused and your brand weakened.

The Automotive News article even quotes Jessica Caldwell from Edmunds.com who says: “Lexus was really strong, but they have lost their footing….BMW is the ‘Ultimate Driving Machine.’  We’re not really sure what Lexus is.”  I agree with her. The overheated luxury segment experienced so much growth in the ’90s and early ’00s, that many of the luxury marques that were fortunate enough to have clear positionings in the beginning were weaker and less distinct at the end of the run-up.

Lexus now finds itself competing in a segment that has a third less volume than it did a year and a half ago.  Volume growth is going to come from a hard fought battle for share-of-market with the best in the business: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Infiniti.  As Lexus moves down market into the “near-luxury” segment, more competitors will enter the fray:  Acura, VW, Volvo.  Every single one of these manufacturers is making well-designed and engineered, high quality vehicles.  More than ever, a manufacturer’s brand reputation is a key differentiator.

Now is the time for Lexus to pause and carefully consider its brand values rather than simply expand its product line to appeal to a new target group’s preferences.  What is at the heart of the Lexus brand? A few things come to mind: unsurpassed quality, comfort, quiet, sophisticated, conservative.  Rather than trying to expand what Lexus stands for, now is the time to re-focus attention on the core values of the brand and make sure that everything they do comes from that core.  Let those values drive product offerings, dealer experience and marketing.  Find a way to make your established core values relevant to a new audience.  That’s how you take an established brand and avoid “tarnishing” it.

The essence of good positioning is knowing what you are….and what you are not. Trying to be all things to all people is the death knell for a brand like Lexus.  It won’t be a question of “tarnishing the image,” Lexus won’t have an image.

If Lexus follows the industry’s well worn path to volume growth, another great automotive brand will be allowed to whither away.  In 1989, Lexus re-invented the luxury car business and established a new brand.  It was an incredibly expensive and difficult thing to do, but they did it and they did it right.  I hope they realize how easily all that good work can be undone.

In the meantime, I’ve got my BOHICA t-shirt on.