Huh? Buick has not only lost the plot, they’ve lost the title of the book. Automotive News [sub] reports that GM’s uh, something brand, is changing its tagline. Again. You may recall that Buick changed its tagline in June. As in just over three months ago. Sure, that tagline sucked. As we pointed out at the time, “Take a look at me now” is/was a po-faced echo of a Phil Collins song about unrequited love destroying the piner. Our Best and Brightest suggested alternatives, none of which included “The new breed of first class.” Buick’s choice manages the virtually impossible: it’s worse than the existing tagline.
As any scientist or schoolchild or former schoolchild will tell you, a class is a set, collection, group, or configuration containing members regarded as having certain attributes or traits in common. So Buick is introducing a new class within world class? What the hell does that mean?
And remember: I’m trying to understand it. Your casual car buyer has about as much chance of remembering “the new class of world class” as they do the quadratic formula. Probably less. GM Ad Czar and TTAC race track competitor Maximum Bob Lutz calls the new Buick advertising “aggressive stuff.” I’m going with “jabberwocky.”
I think this one belongs firmly in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
I find taglines becoming increasingly annoying, what with most of the good ones already taken. This is a new low (high?) in the pantheon of shite taglines.
“GM Ad Czar and TTAC race track competitor Maximum Bob Lutz calls the new Buick advertising “aggressive stuff.””
And so is cocaine.
Did they pay for that stuff? Actually, TTAC could have done better, for free…
Call me old-fashined, but I don’t see anything wrong with the old adage that says that “When better cars are built, Buick will build them”. A saying that may perhaps be one of the best slogans ever made. I mean, I know it by heart, and I have never even driven a Buick. That sentence tells it all, especially now, with Buick having a “false familiarity” and “perception gap” problem. Why not some real familiarity? Why not continue with the notion that Buick actually will build a better car? Better then Buicks of before. Better than the competition. Buick: A new set of rules.
Actually, I get know what goals they aspire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_New_Class
The Neue Klasse was a game changer that set the world on fire. Is that what they are hoping for? Buick ain’t BMW, boys…
These guy’s at Buick sure seem desperate to find a tagline that will sell cars. Maybe some cars that actually interest people would work better. I don’t see how this brand will make it much longer.
The “class” of any group is what the others aspire to, as in “the Yankees are the class of the American League East this year.”
So now you get it. Is Buick the “class” of “world class?” Maybe, maybe not. But you certainly don’t sell much of any product if you don’t show any confidence in it.
I applied for the position of Buick VP Marketing, but they said that “The New Ass of First Class” was only their second most brilliant idea.
Oh well, there’s always Chrysler.
What’s worse..? The tagline or the fact that Lutz would have likely had to approve it himself?
I hope Obamacare provides lots of anti-depressents…
“Buick… as American as won-tons”
Keeping in mind the only reason Buick still exists is because of its popularity in China does any of this actually make any difference?
So long as China reveres Buick the brand will soldier on here money loser or not.
The Buick/Chinese connection.. Makes perfect sense.
The tagline in Chinese is perfect and will elevate the brand.. it just doesn’t translate well into english.
The next tagline we see in the states will be something like
“Buick – Clean rubber, fluids excellent!”
@ Ingvar,
Buick: A new set of rules
Very catchy, good call.
Buick is on track to do very well (IMO) with the Enclave and Lacrosse. Both extremely classy and well-done vehicles.
What GM needs to do is scrap the idea of a tranverse mount Cadillac flagship (XTS) and ship that over to Buick to replace the Lucerne. A small sedan (Buick Regal) and a small SUV (redo of SRX or upscale Equinox) and Buick will be perfect. Preferably, an Invicta coupe… (not going to happen).
Keep Buick FWD/AWD, lofty, luxurious and smooth. Keep Caddy RWD/AWD (except SRX) high-end, germanic luxury.
Im in my mid twenties and I keep checking to see if hell has frozen over… for once in my life there are TWO buicks I would love to own and a number of Cadillacs I would love to own as well.
I could care less about taglines or advertising, etc.
“Wouldn’t you really rather have a new tagline?”
Thank you, stopwhining. Yes, branding and naming interests me.
The problems GM and Buick have, is the perception gap. And that’s not a gap in the customers perception, there’s a real gap of confidence in the product. What they will have to do, is impress people with the product. “A new set of rules” combined with a Huyndai Genesis-type of game changer could actually change it all, even if it took a very long time.
What’s beautiful with the concept is that you can change it as you get along, after the “A new X of Y” formula. A new set of wheels. A new way of beating the competition. A better car for the customer, Your friend on a rainy day. The possibilities are endless, as they say. But “The new class of world class”? It simply doesn’t do it for me.
What sucks is that the new LaCrosse is a pretty damn good car, so is the Enclave for what it is, and they have some interesting products in the pipe, too.
Sound familiar? Buick is where Oldsmobile was in 1995, and where Saturn was around 2005. They’ll probably share their fate.
On that note, can someone explain to me why it seems GM kills their brands just as soon as they get interesting products? It’s weird.
@ ingvar,
The new GM products are damn good though, but I can easily see where non-auto people would automatically dismiss buick based on the past… oh lets say 30 yrs. 10 years ago I would have laughed at the idea of buying a GM (smart-ass teen that I was).
The Enclave/Lacrosse are just damn nice, so far the Enclave has held up well in the couple years its been around. Based on that and the other newer GM products, I would expect the Lacrosse to perform well.
Either way, I don’t have the cash for either one, used is the way to go (for me).
I would still kill to have that Buick coupe (it was a concept– I think it was Invicta). Even if it is transverse mount (but has to be AWD). So long as the interior is on par with the Lacrosse/Enclave, I’d be sold.
“Buick, a nicer car than Lexus, but you brainwashed ass holes won’t believe us”
“Buick, a nicer car than Lexus, but you brainwashed ass holes won’t believe us”
I WISH that had the balls to use that as their tagline! Maybe they should do some negative advertising against Toyondissan, though, they’ve tried everything else. I mean real hard-ball kind of negative ads, like what Sega did against Nintendo in the ’90s.
It took Mercedes ten years to erase 80 years of confidence in their products. It took ten years for Hyundai to raise confidence from scratch. Ten years ago, Hyundai was laughed at. Not any more. Confidence is not something you buy, it’s something you earn. You can not force your customers to change their perception, you have to prove it to them. And the problem is that GM has been pissing their customers in the face for forty straight years.
That’s numerous generations of car buyers. And that’s not something you can turn in a heartbeat. There are many many MANY people out there who will never EVER look at a GM car again. And I think they are lost forever to the competition. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Even if Buicks were bulletproof from now and here on, I’d say it would take ten years or more to raise confidence in the brand again, to the levels it deserves. It can be done, the question is, does GM have the money, the time, and the strength to built the brand up from underneath?
SHARK!
Sound familiar? Buick is where Oldsmobile was in 1995, and where Saturn was around 2005. They’ll probably share their fate.
+1. I’ve said the same. GM seems to think that trying the same thing again and again will eventually work, despite evidence to the contrary.
Which is, I believe, one of the definitions of insanity.
On that note, can someone explain to me why it seems GM kills their brands just as soon as they get interesting products? It’s weird.
I can think of a few reasons:
* Ego: they really think that the world revolves around them, and that their pronouncements are reality.
* Ego, II: This is how they prove that something won’t work. People tell us we have to compete with ____ in the ____ market. Fine, we’ll show you that it can’t work. We’ll spend millions proving the failure. Because we’re GM, and if we can’t do it, no one can. This explains their approach to hybrids.
* Distraction Activity: Yelling about Buick allows us to not have to focus on how we’re fucking up Cadillac, much like Saturn and Olds allowed us to ignore Chevy’s problems
* Cowardice: Doing the right thing is hard and would mean admitting to past failures and taking risk or responsibility. Let’s just slap some shit together under a half-assed marketing campaign
* Volume Is King: GM is geared to making lots and lots of a particular thing. Rationalizing production and design across lots of divisions. Without Pontiac to soak up volume, suddenly we have costs and liabilities accruing elsewhere. Better to play a shell game with models and keep the lines humming. Oh, what about selling this stuff? We’ll deal with that next quarter.
* Next-Quarter Thinking: Most companies have five-year plans. Some Japanese firms extend that to ten, fifteen or even twenty-five years. GM doesn’t think much beyond the next thirty days’ numbers. This is very Hollywood thinking, as in “What have you done for me lately?”.
Bob Lutz was utterly flabberghasted that Saturn didn’t take off despite having great product. I’m sure it would have, eventually, but the perfect-shitstorm of ego and ADD ensured that, if Saturn didn’t turn profit right-fucking-now, it was going to die. You need time and commitment to develop a market. This is basic marketing. Your new marketing VP doesn’t get this and many other basic tenets of marketing, yet he’s going to try the same experiment again.
This is a problem.
I’m actually surprised they’re trying this with Buick.
I was sure they were going to turn GMC into the new Pontiac (eg, instead of Chevys with cladding, we’d have Chevys with square wheel wells). I’d have thought that trying to make Buick (a brand with a dying demographic and conservative tendencies) into a volume brand while trying simultaneously to make it into a Lexus competitor was too foolish an idea even for GM.
Shows what I know.
Are we sure this isn’t just a typical comical (insane) translation from a Chinese ad campaign?
How about:
“Buick: The occasional pursuit of near-perfection, which you won’t even try because of your false familiarity syndrome, will you?”
Aren’t the only brands that successfully pull of taglines actually successful brands?
Ultimate Driving Machine – check
There is no substitute – check
The relentless pursuit of perfection – check
Now, let’s look at those that don’t stick.
Advance – fail – what the hell does that even mean?
Quality is Job 1 – uh, no. No it isn’t, although it might be now. I’ll check back in a few years to see.
We build excitement – no comment needed
Now that I think of it, most brands have no tagline. Maybe it’s a marketing tool used once you actually have a positive reputation that you can build upon.
How about “All your great American road are belong to Buick“?
Aren’t the only brands that successfully pull of taglines actually successful brands?
You’re right, but I correlation does not imply causality. Successful brands have marketing departments that aren’t headed by people like Lutz or La Neve or Docherty, and thusly can develop a tagline.
GM could develop the best products available (and in some markets, they have), but they need people with the ability to convince people to buy them for a fair price. They haven’t had that for a long, long time.
@jkross22:
Quality is Job 1 – uh, no. No it isn’t, although it might be now. I’ll check back in a few years to see.
“Job 1” does not mean “first priority” as Ford seemed to want people to think. It means the first complete vehicle off the line. What “Quality is Job 1” means, literally, is that they’ll carefully build the first car down the line, and all bets are off after that.
@psarhjinian:
GM could develop the best products available (and in some markets, they have)
…Oh? Such as which ones?
…Oh? Such as which ones?
The answer that gets thrown out (usually as a way to justify, or at least excuse, their other sins) is the Corvette, but you could probably make cases for the GMT900s, G8/Commodore and possibly the CTS.
I don’t want to distract from the original point, though: even if GM put the kind of effort into the Aveo that they do into the Corvette and GMTs, they still have to deal with the nitwits in marketing. People fail to understand how bad GM Marketing really is. It’s not just advertising, it’s their singular failure to connect with their erstwhile customers and develop products people will buy.
Here’s GM Marketing in action: develop a huge, costly ad campaign for a car that will barely sell a few thousand units because it’s built for customers that don’t exist. Then cannibalize the sales of your core products by both failing to market them, and by developing internally-competitive products. Then completely change your strategy every quarter unless you get instant traction.
That the Corvette sells at all is testament to how good it really is, because GM couldn’t sell free gold bullion. I’m at a loss to figure out if they’re worse than Ford. I used to think Ford was the more problematic, but they don’t go off on multimillion-dollar flights of fancy.
“We Stopped Selling Geriatric Crap Years Ago.”
I mean, get to the point man!
Here ya go GM…
Pitchman: Jerry Stiller
Tagline: Serenity Now
It just might connect with their target 40’s demographic. Now send me my check.
But is Buick utilizing Kansei Engineering.
“The new class in world class”?
So “world class” that it’s only sold in the North America, China, Taiwan and Israel?
I mean real hard-ball kind of negative ads, like what Sega did against Nintendo in the ’90s.
There is a good reason not to do this…look up these two companies now and check their current market cap.
Buick is a 50% state-owned partner-Chinese car company trying to hang on in the states as a 100% USA/Canadian govt & Workers Union owned company. To most people, any car they market doesn’t matter, it could be powered by cow fur but Americans just don’t like their quasi luxury goods companies to be bankrupt/state owned. They also don’t like cars from companies that have royally sucked a__ for 20 years and now tell the public we’re too dim to notice how cool their new cars are. just sayin’
In China however, state owned is okey dokey ponokey. Quality is a bonus.
I finally figured out why GM is so %^$#’d up.
You have the status-quo-thinking Old Guard making the final decisions on the tons of crap handed to them by drug-crazed young Harvard and Stanford grads.
GIGO (garbage in – garbage out)
I still think that Buick could survive and thrive, if they’d focus.
I’m thinking:
Buick- Fly Executive Class
But this ” The new class of world class” starts me playing with spin-offs like:
Buick – The Third World class of world class
uhhmn, How do you say ” Wouldn’t you really like to have a Buick?” in Cantonese?
“when better cars are built (in China), Susan “Hummer ” Docherty will market them!”
There is a good reason not to do this…look up these two companies now and check their current market cap.
Well, they’ve tried saying “We’re just as good as Toyota and Honda! Promise!” for years and it hasn’t borne fruit, so why not try it? Take Toyota and Honda down a notch to your level if no one will believe you’re as good as them. The former strategy is making their competition look GOOD, is that what they really want?
And really, there’s legitimate stuff to criticize Toyota and Honda on at this point. Toyota is coasting on reputation, while Honda is releasing hideous stuff like the Crosstour and the entire Acura line.
I’m doubtful that any tagline would have garnered the united support of the TTAC faithful. Furthermore, a tagline is not going to deliver salvation to Buick. If taglines are going to occupy their communication efforts on a quarterly basis, they have bigger problems.
Speaking of bigger problems, I can’t believe it took 40 comments before Susan Docherty was mentioned. Who’s running Buick anyway?
Hyundai made a turnaround without a catchy tagline, but with a 10 year/100k mile warranty.
There’s a lesson in here somewhere that even the folks at GM should be able to figure out.
As for the Buick name, kill it already. It is forever cemented into people’s mind as Grandpa Car.
As for the Buick name, kill it already. It is forever cemented into people’s mind as Grandpa Car.
Marlboro was once a woman’s cigarette, too.
If they’re gonna use Phil Collins, how about “I don’t care no more”
Actually, a great tagline would be “not out of business YET”
John
“The New Crass of World Class”?
My Dad drove Buick Electras from 1964 to 1980 and I learned to drive in 1972 & 1974’s. I thought back then they were for middle age people my Dads age ( Cadillacs were for old people), with the exception being early 70’s GSX and late 70’s turbo models. In the 80’s the Buick GN was one of the cars to have even when we were in our 20’s. After that (90’s) the Lexus’s and Impala SS were the big/luxury cars we wanted if had to choose, so maybe then was when Buick lost its appeal. No hotrod model to attract younger buyers. LaCrosse GNX anyone?
“As for the Buick name, kill it already. It is forever cemented into people’s mind as Grandpa Car.”
When I was a kid, Buicks were four-door sedans that were either black or dark blue – you couldn’t tell which after they got a year old and the paint oxidized. It appears from the comments above that this reputation from the 1930’s and 40’s has been handed intact to the current generation of car buyers. We are talking about more than half a century of tradition here, and you don’t blow that away with a new tagline. Maybe the President should do a commercial for them when he goes on Letterman.
Taglines should reinforce a product’s position among its intended group of current and potential buyers.
No GM product positioning will change after the eons of shoddy products, poor customer experiences and Federal bailout until there is a generational change in the US of A.
So, short of a re-population of America pursuant to Armageddon, Buick’s positioning will remain unchanged and best captured by what – IMO – remains the top TTAC post of all time:
“Get off my lawn, you damn kids!”
“Buick – we’re not dead yet” or
“Buick – this is your next rental car”
We build great cars for out customers… and Americans might like them too
“Buick–because you are that old.”
Changing their tag line every few months may seem pointless. What really do they have to lose? Credibility? That’s long gone.
@ psarhjinian and BDB: I think the important thing to remember is that there’s a huge divide between the divisional management (which is responsible for sorting out what products they offer, within the bounds the corporation sets on them) and senior management (which decides if the brands live or die). GM history is littered with examples of the divisions trying to do stuff that’s interesting and occasionally even cool, only to have the 14th floor fight them every step of the way. Part of the issue is that the division people are generally engineers, while the senior decision-makers are accountants. Once upon a time, the idea was that the chairman would be an accountant and the president/COO an engineer, but over the years, the finance guys’ power has increased disproportionately.
It’s not uncommon for the managers of the division to have strong and sometimes quite astute ideas about what they should do, only to be denied the tools to follow up. For example, in the early 80s, Cadillac wanted a smaller car to appeal to BMW buyers. What the corporation gave them was the J-body, and then denied them enough money to give it more than a cursory cosmetic makeover. The Cimmaron was not what Leonard Wanetik (the product planner responsible for the project) had in mind; it was what the finance guys made of his original idea.
“Fuck what your friends think.” That’d work nicely.
“Buick: The relentless pursuit of a new tagline”
Buick: The Cadillac of….oh nevermind.