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TTAC's writers and readers have been saying GM's biggest problem is a massive identity crisis. Now marketing guru Laura Ries is telling the RenCen bunch the same thing about Saturn at The Origin of Brands. Ries takes The General to task saying "Saturn doesn't have a product problem, Saturn doesn't have an advertising problem, Saturn has a ginormous branding problem. What is a Saturn? What does it look like? Who is it for? Who knows." With a few notable exceptions like Corvette, her comments could apply to any vehicle that has come out of Detroit for the last, oh… 40 years or so. Maybe Motown's marketing mavens will listen to one of their own. Look! There goes a pig-shaped flying car!
15 Comments on “Saturn Needs to Rethink “Rethink American”...”
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New Saturn = sexy euro style… rethink American by thinking about the Opel lightning bolt…zap.
If they can keep design consistency they might have a winner, the Aura and the Astra and the Sky are quite nice and present a cohesive brand offering. Now they just have to market it correctly…
They’ve got some nice looking cars on the lot, no doubt. My wife wants me to go with her to a Saturn lot tonight to look at both the Aura and the new Vue, which is saying a lot. But the advertising tagline is pretty poor…What is an American car? A lot of people are confused on that issue. It is easier to define what is not an American car…like, for instance, a Korean designed, German engineered, Mexican built SUV. Or a German engineered car built in Belgium.
Saturn’s Outlook and Sky can rightly be described as “American”, because at least they were designed and built here, and more than partially engineered here. The Aura even, can be argued as American…it is on the stretched “American” Epsilon platform, is built in Kansas, the Opel design was tweaked (and made better) for the US market, and has near 90% domestic content.
I think the fundamental problem is that if GM properly makes cars for Chevy then Chevrolet and Saturn become redundant.
Just because Chevy was the base cheap division in the Sloan days doesn’t work. In my opinion GM deliberately use to make Chevrolet’s crappy in order not to cannibalize sales from their allegedly upscale sister divisions.
The problem is clear when looking at the Malibu. Here is the first true Honda Accord competitor from Chevy. How is it that GM hasn’t had a Honda Accord competitor in years and now suddenly they have two in the Malibu and (Saturn Aura).
You can’t get someone out of an Accord into your car by deliberately holding back some of your good stuff because Honda isn’t going to hold back their good stuff.
GM is finally doing that at Chevy, the problem is GM already tried their best at Saturn in the 90s. If they properly execute and build good Chevy’s then they become redundant with Saturn. How much effort and money is GM wasting in making both the Malibu and the Aura.
Another way of looking at it is that GM has two good but duplicate brands Chevy and Saturn and two crappy brands in Pontiac and Buick plus Cadillac
Saturn should be the most Opelized part of GM, the division that does the least Americanization of the Opels – they should simply be selling Astras and Vectras. If the gas price gains an extra dollar and the euro loses some of its value, such a concept will be raking in money. This is the only sound branding strategy I can think of.
After the Astra is intro’ed, the tagline should properly read: Rethink “American”. But, GM keeping the brand alive (even with “World” platforms) appears to be Job#1 for the time being.
I think the answer to “What does it look like?” is pretty obvious. The Saturn lineup looks pretty cohesive now: big angular headlights, wide chrome bar across the grill, and European styling. But I don’t think Saturn has figured out yet who they’re trying to sell to.
Historically they’ve always brought in a fair number of customers who had never bought a GM before. Now they sound like they’re just trying to be a slightly upscale Chevy with the new “Rethink American” ads, which I think is working to undo that history. Their best bet is to probably stick to the import buyers and other non-GM customers. Most of those people don’t care where their car was built or where the company is based.
I think the “Like Always, Like Never Before” campaign was much better (though still lacking). It didn’t try to sell vehicles based on some sense of patriotism and instead let those vehicles speak for themselves.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of Saturn being the “beautiful” brand. It implies the rest of the GM stable is ugly and plain.
I liked the old Saturn. Cars built for people who bought cars as nessesities. Basic transportation bought at low stress dealerships. To me, this was Saturn’s biggest strength.
I’ve always thought “Rethink American” as a marketing strategy was inherently flawed anyways. I mean, sure, the general public doesn’t consider American cars as reliable/stylish/whatever as some of its German/Japanese counterparts, but you don’t want to admit that in your slogan do you? By saying rethink, you’re admitting something was wrong in the first place. It is, but I don’t think you want your new slogan to boil down to “Hey! We’re better than we used to be!”
Saturn is, and always has been, a dumb idea. It was a dumb idea when they only sold one car, it’s a dumb idea now. Now, when it only sold one car, and that car sold a lot, it seemed like a good idea from a distance-but you can’t make money on a brand that sells only one car, so it was a dumb idea in that it lost GM billions.
But, the original dumb idea (Saturns are all Corolla/Civic fighting compact sedans) made the new direction they are taking the brand fail as well. People don’t want to pay thirty or forty thousand dollars for a Saturn, especially with the no haggle-policy, so the attempt to take it upmarket fails. Worse still, that generic Saturn I just was talking about (a compact sedan) no longer exists. The “replacement” for the now-discontinued Ion (the Astra) is hatchback only. Worse still, due to increased costs in importing a car, tariffs, and the weak dollar, GM will lose money on every Astra they sell.
GM should take the hit (in terms of dealer bribes to get out of business) and shut Saturn down. I suspect that if this all-new line up fails (which it has, sales-wise, even though the cars aren’t bad at all), they may do so.
To those who advocate GM shed a brand or three… consider the consolidation of Buick-Pontiac-GMC dealers. An easier way to kill three brands would be hard to come by, given their combined lackluster sales.
Getting rid of Saab would be easy, too — either sell it or, if there are no buyers, close it down, as there aren’t that many Saab dealers to worry about, away.
That would leave a rational product mix (except for Hummer): Chevy, Saturn and Cadillac.
GM seems to be trying to turn Saturn into Oldsmobile. That’s going to be challenging to make work.
I’m surprised they haven’t just restructured Saturn’s line up a bit and marketed them as the green division.
It is a big stretch to move from selling absolute junk like the ION to attempt to now sell $30,000+ cars! GM needs to overcome the image that it made for Saturn over the last 10 years. Saturn was interesting with a bit of protential in its beginning but GM let that little bit of promise fade into oblivion with the usual EXPECTED GM missteps.
Now here we go once again with the General and its delusions of grandeur. Only the execs at GM could forget about such disasters as the LS, ION, and the last gen Vue. Come on the ION was the WORST car on the market for the last few years! It sad because it is obvious that GM is capable of building very good cars but its corporate culture will be its death.
GM and Ford will continue to pay the price for saying F@*K cars during the stupid SUV craze. Why would any satisfied current Honda Accord owner want to shop an auto company that is being force to produce those dreaded less profitable than an SUV passanger cars.
Just like folks here love to claim that Acura/Infiniti/Lexus can never make a better drivers car than BMW, why on earth would we believe that GM can make a truely competitive alternative to the Accord or Camry?
“GM seems to be trying to turn Saturn into Oldsmobile. That’s going to be challenging to make work.”
That’s explicitly what they’re trying to do. A few years ago, the morons chose to kill Oldsmobile, their best line of mid-size cars going at the time, in order to keep the small car brand instead. Now, they’re making Saturn the mid- size car line that they just killed. It took them a few years to realize their mistake, and this is what they have to do to correct it.
What they should be doing at the same time is positioning Chevy down-market and smaller to fill that econo-niche, since this is what needs to happen (besides losing customers to the Fit and Yaris) but, no. Chevy’s big rear-drive cars are coming, to compete directly with Pontiac (again), the next-gen Deltas will be bigger, the next-gen Epsilons will be bigger. Leaving the Aveo (hah!) as GM’s one-and-only econo-entry in the US to satisfy that whole market.
The New Saturn, ebadged Opels!!! Saturns for everyoone!!!
Come see the new Saturns!!! America is back fighting the imports with our new Saturns!! Better fuel economy, style, and cheaper than the imports!!! Foreign brands bad, GM imported brands good.
Saturns for everyoone!!! Come see the new Saturns!!! Don’t buy an import save America!!!! Come see the new Saturns!!!!
Outside of the automotive press and gearhead worlds pretty much nobody cares about Saturn. The brand is already dead. Everything other than Chevrolet and Cadillac should be done away with, then make ever darn Chevy and Cadillac product the very best in their field.