Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Can Cadillac succeed in Europe?

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Amid all the drama surrounding GM, every so often I see something that strikes me a smart.  In Geneva, Cadillac announced it’s aspirations for Europe (WSJ 3/8/10 Sub required,  NYT 3/2/10).

After a number of high profile failures to enter the European market in a big way, the folks at Cadillac want to be a niche player and are willing to accept the lower volumes that go along with such a strategy.  By keeping volumes low, and presumably margins high, they expect that they can be profitable from year 1.

I think this strategy is sound and will succeed.  Cadillac’s current design language is unique and appealing.  There has always been a segment of the automotive market that is interested in something different and Europe is no different than the United States in this regard.  In Europe where Mercedes-Benzes, Audis and BMWs are common and cover a multitude of uses including taxis, rental cars, executive cars and the vehicles of choice for captains of industry, there is an opportunity for something “different.”

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“Global” Campaigns & The Ultimate Driving Machine

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

My last post regarding BMW’s new campaign resulted in a few conversations with colleagues that were interesting and got me thinking about the challenges associated with marketing a global automotive brand and the concept of a global campaign.

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:

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BMW & Joy: “Danger Will Robinson”

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

It has a feeling of inevitability attached to it, but still, I can’t help but feel let down.  For years many of us have held up BMW as the example of a car company that understands its brand and sticks to it. That all just changed. BMW is no longer the manufacturer of The Ultimate Driving Machine, according to this commercial “at BMW, we don’t just make cars, we make joy.”:

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.

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Responding to Toyota’s troubles. With incentives!!??

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Toyota has been very successful in the US and has undeniably eaten Detroit’s lunch. Now Toyota has stumbled and you can hardly blame its competitors for attempting to take advantage of the situation.

That said, it’s a good time to pause and take a deep breath, because as so often is true, it’s not what you do but how you do it that matters.

Today’s New York Times has an article headlined: “With Toyota in trouble, rivals gain.” Manufacturers are offering incentives to encourage Toyota owners to come in their stores, trade-in their Toyota for a new whatever. Supposedly these incentives are not being widely advertised and dealers are being encouraged not to “try to take a predatory stance in this type of environment.”  According to GM and others, their dealers have requested incentive support.  Of course they wanted incentive support, there’s blood in the water.

There are a couple of good reasons to push back against this knee jerk reaction to offer incentives. (more…)

Muller said Saab can be “very, very profitable,” partially by staying true to its own DNA.

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Mr. Muller and Spyker have finally got a deal to buy SAAB from GM (Automotive News 1/26/10).  It sounds like Mr Muller and his team understand the importance of a brand’s DNA.

By rebuilding the uniqueness of the SAAB brand they will be able to re-ignite the passion of their enthusiasts and build the business. SAAB will never be a quarter of a million unit business in the US but it can be successful.  Forcing SAAB into GM’s”success” model was the problem, now it has a second chance.

Congratulations to Mr Muller, Spyker, and SAAB loyalists everywhere. Finally, an automotive brand that will be coming back rather than disappearing.  Like Audi before it, bringing SAAB back in the US market place will be a labor of love and a “mission from God.”   Sign me up.

Do you know what your automotive brand’s promise is?

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

There’s an interesting piece in this week’s Adweek by Dean Crutchfield, Chief Engagement Officer at Method: “A Brand by Any Other Name…”

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.” (more…)

“Lexus’ plans: Not just big-bucks sedans”—Do you know where your BOHICA t-shirt is?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Here it comes again, another automotive luxury brand seeking to have “wider appeal without tarnishing the image” (Automotive News 1/11/10).

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.

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Super Bowl XLIV—Will the auto industry carry the day?

Friday, January 15th, 2010

The 2010 Super Bowl may or may not be a good football game, but there will be a whole bunch of automotive commercials to watch. Here are the six manufacturers who will be advertising on this year’s extravaganza:

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With 2009 behind us it will be fascinating to watch what each brand does with their piece of the most expensive advertising real estate in the world. The Super Bowl represents an incredible opportunity to reach the biggest television audience of the year.  Brands that have used the opportunity well, have in some cases changed their fortunes…Apple’s introduction of the Mac comes to mind:

Here’s the challenge with the Super Bowl.  The Super Bowl is not just the game that decides the NFL champion, it has become the crucible in which winners and losers are defined in the advertising business. USAToday will not only report who won the game, they rank the advertising gladiators. There’s a lot at stake for the agencies and their clients.

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SAAB and the commoditization of automobiles

Monday, December 21st, 2009

The SAAB brand is fighting for its life.  After being pronounced dead last week, there is a glimmer of hope this morning.  I think it’s important that SAAB survive.  Not just because thousands of jobs depend on it but because we need brands like SAAB to push back against the commoditization of the automobile industry.

There are lots of reasons to let SAAB go.  It hasn’t made money in years.  It doesn’t sell enough cars to compete in the global auto industry.  GM has starved it for product.  It lost its uniqueness years ago.  It was really never “iconic,” just “quirky.”  The list goes on and on, and many of the reasons are very sound.

I hope that GM will allow Spyker to buy SAAB.  An independent company like Spyker could enable SAAB to reclaim its position as a niche brand with a unique product and a loyal enthusiast base.  We need a brand like SAAB to prove that interesting, well engineered products still have a place in the industry and can be successful.

In its effort to make SAAB appeal more broadly and therefore justify volume levels that would make it “viable,”  GM turned it into just another undifferentiated near-luxury entrant.  The world does not need another undifferentiated automotive brand and from that perspective I understand why people think SAAB should go away. SAAB would be yet another automotive brand that was once distinctive, chased volume using the MDIBTYD volume forecasting methodology and ultimately failed because it lost sight of the core values that actually made the brand “viable” in the first place.

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Johan de Nysschen calls out Washington on EVs

Monday, December 14th, 2009

The question now is…will anyone listen to him?

As reported in today’s Detroit News, Audi of America’s Johan de Nysschen called out the current political leadership for “falling in love” with electric vehicles.  He’s absolutely right, EVs and Hybrids have become the fashionable automotive technology and Washington’s choice for the future.

The only problem is that EVs won’t make a difference for two decades.  The New York Times reported that “plug-in hybrids would not have a significant impact on the nation’s oil consumption or carbon emissions before 2030.” To be clear though, de Nysschen is not saying EVs and Hybrids are wrong or won’t play an important role in the future. What he’s saying is that Washington is picking winners and losers from a technology point of view rather than remaining agnostic, and he’s right.

Clean diesel remains the best near term technology available for reducing our dependance on foreign oil and CO2 emissions (the major cause of global warming), yet no one in Washington seems interested.  It seems that “diesel” is literally a dirty word. (more…)