Truck marketing is so out of ideas. Despite a few hesitant signs that the old “bigger, stronger, butcher” paradigm might be giving way to less primitive appeals to consumers, GM’s Tom Stephens has dragged truck marketing back to the stone age, issueing the following challenge to Ford [via Pickuptrucks.com].
You’re going to love our new diesel Duramax engine in the new Heavy Duty. You know what I want to do to prove it? I want to take our truck and Ford’s [new Super Duty] and chain them together back -to-back. Then I want to have them pull against each other. I know our truck will beat theirs.
Pickuptrucks.com has passed the memo on to Ford, in hopes of spawning a “V-Series Challenge”-type media stunt. Too bad it will never happen. When the trucks are evenly-matched, these contests tend to come down to driver skill, timing and luck. And what would that prove? Note to GM: if you want to market your trucks in wholly unoriginal ways, leave reality out of it and just make an ad showing your truck kicking the other trucks asses or mocking owners of competing brands. You know, the way the good lord intended trucks to be marketed. These guys have it figured out.
A strong team is only as good as its weakest link, particularly in the automotive industry. Treat your suppliers well and they’ll play fair by you. Try to screw them and they’ll collapse leaving you with serious production problems. Detroit (Chrysler in particular) had the worst reputation for treating their suppliers badly, but the Pentastar brand now claims to be trying to change all that.
The gist of Sweet Pete DeLorenzo’s argument is that Chrysler has to do something to remind Americans that they still exist. Given the Chrysler’s inability thus far to articulate a vision for the Dodge brand post-Ram, this makes a certain amount of sense. With a new, well-respected ad agency, Dodge could use the Super Bowl’s giant stage to get back on the buying public’s radar. The problem with the plan lies in the one question that DeLorenzo fails to answer: why bring buyers into Dodge showrooms if there’s nothing there? Read More >
A large part of TTAC’s mission is pulling aside the curtain on the industry, exposing the humans behind the cars that make up our everyday lives. Automobiles have always reflected something of the individuals and cultures that created them, so it’s fascinating to see the different personalities that go into running the world’s automakers. Still, as paid executives, their performances are usually polished to a high sheen; the folks behind you favorite car blogs on the other hand, not so much. The interplay between the two is often as revealing as it is entertaining. Can’t get enough? The complete session is available at joelfeder.com.
Sort of. At least she might have if my esteemed fellow bloggers had let her get a word in edgewise. No wonder GM seems to have such a low opinion of the “well informed.”
Anyway, the clip’s money quote comes at 1:47, when Docherty lets out the classic Freudian slip: “the last competitive product I spent a couple of weeks in was the Acura TSX.” Whoops!
With the Japanese Yen hovering around the 91 to 1 U.S Dollar exchange rate, a bullish VW focusing on boosting their market share in North America and Ford rising up, Toyota are probably a bit depressed. Business Week reports that, for the second year in a row, Toyota have resigned themselves to the notion that their North American division will post a loss this fiscal year. This will, almost certainly, have a knock-on effect in Toyota’s ability to turn a profit in the North American market, even after more cost cutting. “The finance company is having a solid year, so if you include that it will be so much easier to say positive things,” Yoshimi Inaba, Toyota’s North American chief executive, told reporters in Detroit. “We are still trying hard to improve (sales and manufacturing operations).”
NPR reports that Hyundai’s Assurance Plan, which is widely credited for much of that automaker’s success since the financial meltdown, has been taken advantage of fewer thn 100 times since it was instituted a year ago. In that time, Hyundai has sold over 435k vehicles, meaning the program has cost surprisingly little. Hyundai Motor America CEO John Krafic explains:
we treat it almost like a kind of insurance, a kind of social insurance, so we had to make some, you know, financial set-aside for it. And in the end, it ended up being substantially below what our expectations were, thank goodness.
According to Krafic, the program took only 37 days to implement. [Hat Tip: ClutchCarGo]
The Cadillac XTS Platinum Concept, which debuts today at the NAIAS, is a look at the new Cadillac flagship which goes into production in early 2012. The XTS’s brief is to replace the moribund DTS and STS sedans, a task that Cadillac desperately needs done properly if it wants to be taken seriously as a luxury competitor. So why is the XTS concept little more than a glorified Buick LaCrosse?
Having been told by the Secretary of Transportation that the Chrysler Group’s motley assortment of new trim level names, rebadged Lancias, decal-sporting special editions represents “the cutting edge of developing the kind of products that I think people in this country, and also in other countries, are really going to feel very favorable toward,” CEO Sergio Marchionne apparently thought enough had been said about his struggling bailout baby. As CBS reports, Marchionne suddenly canceled a 45-minute scheduled press availability before he had the chance to confirm LaHood’s astonishing opinion.
It’s a bit early in the day to be crowning a QOTD, especially considering there are sure to be plenty of juicy quotes coming out of the NAIAS today. Still, this one deserves a special place at TTAC for the sheer bold-faced shamelessness of its untruth.
I think (the government bailout was) well placed, and I think they’ll make a lot of money. GM’s on its way back. We’ll be back. The government’s made a good investment. We appreciate their support. We’re glad they’re here.
So said GM Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre to reporters from the Detroit News today. As I recently explained in an op-ed in the NY Times, unless GM’s market cap soars to its highest level in history (a pipe dream if ever there was one) the taxpayer losses on the GM “investment” will be in the billions. Even the government estimates losses on the GM and Chrysler bailouts to reach $30b. Whitacre surely meant that a GM IPO will generate some kind of money for the Treasury’s 60 percent stake in GM, but the way it came out makes it sound like the bailout will be a positive investment for the government. That’s an impression that GM desperately needs to foster in order to have a chance at emerging from government control. Too bad it’s just an old-fashioned fib.
GM’s VP got a guest spot on Edmund’s Inside Line to promote his “to-do list for 2010.” The top two spots on the list are dedicated to Lutz’s resolution to “remain focused on the product above all else,” presumably because “stop repeating self” was cut by GM PR. But number three on Lutz’s list is of considerably more interest. Labeled “change minds,” Lutz uses the entry to defend the General’s “perception gap” hobbyhorse. You see, when GM accuses consumers of being too stupid to understand how great GM’s products are, they aren’t actually calling consumers stupid. In hopes of clearing up the confusion, Lutz does what any other savvy marketer would do: call the media stupid.
Let me digress for a moment and say that I’ve seen it written that GM’s marketing strategy is based on the fact that the consumer is too dumb to know what great vehicles it makes. I take huge issue with that. That’s an example of the media trying to ascribe some of the old GM arrogance where none exists.
In the first unique Chrysler brand spot since bankruptcy, America is referred to as ChryCo’s “traveling companion.” Which is a bit rich, considering the American people were generous enough to spend billions pulling the wreck that was Chrysler out of a ditch less than a year ago. Who knows, maybe the term “unwilling investors” didn’t play so well in the workshops, a possibility that might also explain why only a single modern Chrysler vehicle (the 300) is allowed to punctuate the ad’s gauzy nostalgia. In any case, notch up another Chrysler Group ad that says nothing about anything that might give one hope for the firm’s future. Ironically enough… Read More >
Chrysler have seen the Detroit Auto Show as a venue for excessively extroverted stunts. Previous years saw a Jeep dropping from the ceiling, leaping minivans and cowboys herding cattle outside the exhibit hall. Top Chrysler executives even traditionally poured drinks for visitors at its Firehouse bar. But with the economy coming of recession and Chrysler coming out a Chapter 11 reorganisation, CEO Sergio Marchionne feels that the extravagance needs to be severely curtailed, and according to Asiaone.com, he has put an embargo on press events. “We wanted to be respectful of everyone’s time. Mr. Marchionne is a very practical guy,” Chrysler spokesman Rick Deneau told AFP. “We didn’t have anything to show.” Well, besides a Lancia rebadged as a Chrysler, but who wants to draw a lot of attention to that?
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