The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix""
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The Brand
The
Future of Advertising
The Targets
The
Future of Advertising
The Grid
The
Future of Advertising
The Swarm
Technology
Making The Message
Meaningful
The Only Business That Matters Is The One You're In.
What
Ever Happened To The
Big Idea?
The Post-Advertising Era Is Here
Confessions Of A" Liar For Hire"
Good, Bad and Ugly At the Moment of Truth
A Post-Advertising "Big Idea".
The Value Of A Paying Pustomer.
Emergence Of the "Empire of One".
All customers Are Created Equal
Playing God An Other Atrocities
the
City That Spawned
The Age Of Advertising..
Fear And Self Loathing In Advertising.
The Greatest Success Metric Is Sales.
Foot In (Word Of) Mouth Disease
In the Begining, There Was The End.
The Rise And Fall
Of The Creative Class
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Champagne Brand
Beer Marketing Budget
Amtrak: Third World Nation On Wheels.
New Music Means
New Marketing.
|
Automotive Advertising Hits A Dead End. Screeeeeeeeeech!!! Whump! Tinkle! Tinkle! Another automotive marketing manager's career hits the skids as Dick Schembri ricochets from Mercedes Smart Car to Mitubishi top marketing post and then spins out into the street. How can so many people be spending so much money to get so much advertising so damn wrong? Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!!! Out the door they go. But nothing gets any better. Remember Chevrolet's C.J. Frawley? He was one of the first guys to publicly admit that Detroit was creatively bankrupt. "We don't care where a big idea comes from," he told the trades. Now he's pushing Sara Lee. |
|
|
|
Then there was my personal fav, Ian Bevis, predecessor of Mr. Schembly at Mitsubishi. He was the first guy to admit to the world that network television was a nose bleed and that he was pulling Mitsu's $500 million off the nets and putting it on the web. Nobody was listening, so back he went to Hyundai. Meanwhile, back at GM, Bob Lutz is playing musical chairs cycling first Hummer and then Cadillac through creative powerhouse Modernista, whose principals gave us the VW Drivers Wanted campaign when they were at Arnold...Who just lost VW to Bogusky...When BMW client left BMW for VW. Curiouser and curiouser. |
|
What do you think about the fact There are very few minorities in anything. That's what makes them minorities. – hw |
|
Personally, I don't get it. According to the latest report on domestic auto sales by J.D. Power & Associates, US auto makers saw an 11 percent decline in retail sales through the first 15 days of January when compared to the same time period a year ago. GM and Ford retail sales declined when compared to early January 2005 with GM down 28 percent and Ford down 25 percent. DaimlerChrysler was also down 13 percent when compared to the same period in 2005. Among the nine multi-franchise new-vehicle manufacturers, Hyundai and Toyota have had the best retail performance thus far in January. Retail sales for Hyundai were up 19 percent (Go Bevis! Go Bevis!) and Toyota Motor retail sales were up 9 percent compared to the first half of January 2005. Paul Taylor, the chief economist for the National Automotive Dealers Association, forecast that 2006 light vehicle sales would slip to 16.8 million units, down from 16.94 million in 2005. Taylor states that while U.S. economic indicators were mostly positive, higher financing costs would start to weigh on sales. He notes that it took over 26 weeks of the average worker's pay to buy a new car in 2005, a sharply higher reading for a key index of affordability that had been flat or falling over the prior eight years. Surveys show that when consumers are past the awareness stage, they are more engaged in the buying process. Traditionally, auto advertising has been most effective at this point. Especially print advertising. But in fact, internet advertising on auto sites is nearly five times more effective at improving purchase intent/consideration than the average impact on consumers from print and television advertising. Since these on-line messages reach consumers while they are further along the purchase funnel, it is not surprising that advertising on auto sites can have a greater persuasive impact then on every other media. People who are in the market to buy a vehicle are more likely to be receptive to messaging about pricing deals and product differentiation on their primarily source for auto purchase info. Duh. So on one hand we have Americans working harder to pay for a new car than ever before, and on the other we have the slide of print and television advertising into online. And what do we have from the auto makers? Blah, blah, blah. I mean, have you seen some of this crap? First of all, I defy any sane human being to delineate the difference between a Camry and an Elantra. Or their advertising for that matter. Now I've worked on Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler. I have sat in the mind-numbing meetings where engineers went to great lengths to explain product differentiators that defy detection with a fucking microscope. These "car guys" are all talking to themselves. And with the exception of Hummer, Land Rover, Corvette and perhaps Jeep, everybody else is "me too" whitebread. I remember applauding the Miata, until I saw James Bond driving a BMW that looked just like it with the exception of a cleft lip grille. Ridiculous. All it boils down to is that, with perhaps the exception of the advertising for the Mini, everything is a blur. The nameplates are a blur. The creative strategies are a blur. The product styling is a blur. The price point positioning is a blur. I remember how excited I was at seeing the PT Cruiser when it was unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show. "Now here is a car an agency can do something with. I was waiting for them to hire Robert Stack (Elliot Ness) or Warren Beatty (Clyde Barrow) as the launch spokesman. Get Frances Ford Coppola or Marty Scorsese to shoot the first spots. It was a no brainer, I thought. And of course there were no brains used in the marketing effort. The car was successful in spite of the lackluster marketing effort that supported it. A car is no more than a family tool. It is depended upon to perform a number of jobs. Yet no automobile advertising addresses that fact. It is the second most expensive item that most of us will ever purchase. Yet no automobile advertising addresses that fact. Once there was tremendous brand loyalty among automotive consumers. My father was a "Buick man." Smokey Robinson's father was a "Caddy Daddy." I've owned eight Corvettes in my lifetime. (Two marriages forced me into a Volvo station wagon and a Toyota SUV. Blech.) Now, brand loyalty has gone the way of tail fins and spinner hubcaps. The great American love affair with the automobile is on the rocks. Now it's just a way to get from point A to point B. At last week's Square Table discussion in the Red Room at GASP, one of the participants remarked that the only car he had ever held an affinity for was the BMW that saved his life when it DIDN'T swerve off the road and down a 30 ft embankment when he pounded it through a rain slicked curve up in the Angeles Forest. He gave the Beemer the job of getting him home safely. It did its job well. For him it was, as my buddy Tom Thomas penned, "The Ultimate Driving Machine".
Stay tuned.
|
 |
|
MARKETERS
FROM P&F COMMUNICATIONS ADRANTS BANK
OF AMERICA ESTEE
LAUDER COMPANIES WELCOME
And You. *All
IP addresses confirmed by Urchin WebStats |
|