GM spent $4.26 billion for advertising last year, globally. 67 percent, or $2.85 billion were spent in the U.S. A good chunk of this budget, around $3 billion, are up for review. Meaning: The agencies that handle it must come up with concepts and defend theirs against concepts of other agencies that want to handle the funds. Please note that this has nothing to do with creative ideas, or not in the true sense of it. We are talking media buying here, buying time on network, space in magazines, clicks on Google. It should be as interesting as deciding whether your accounting work will be done by Peat Marwick or by KPMG. (Loud howls of protest from the media agencies, who are as proud of the cleverness of their media plans as the CPA firms are pleased with their creative accounting.)
The adworld is abuzz about the move, $3 billion possibly changing to new handlers can shake up carefully cultivated relationships. The question everybody is asking: “Why?” (Read More…)
The famous Japanese monozukuri (craftsmanship, sometimes “the process of continually making something better”) is going down the drain. It took the combined efforts of “a consortium of 57 small businesses in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture,” reports The Nikkei [sub] before they could “unveil a prototype one-seater electric car that can travel 100km between charges.” (Read More…)
Forecasting the success of game-changing technologies is like predicting the weather. Despite a mediocre success rate, it is done every day. Ask me what the weather will be in 2017, and if I want to be absolutely right, I will say: “During the summer months, we expect sun with occasional rain, whereas in the winter months, some snow can be expected.” This prediction would protect my career in any company, but it won’t get me any press.
If I want press, I need to say: “In 2017, fire and brimstone will rain from the skies, which will cause a great conflagration, because all rain will have stopped a year earlier.” These predictions can be made with little risk. Six years down the road, who will remember the nonsense I said today? That thought crosses my mind as I read studies that predict the adoption of electric vehicles. Today, we have two of those. They couldn’t be more apart. We commissioned a third one. (Read More…)
Michelle Krebs and Lacey Plache of Edmunds.com, decorated heroes of the TTAC “rate the analysts” contest (to be repeated) are raining on the parade of good sales forceasts, definitely for August, possibly for the year. Edmunds thinks that August sales will be flat. Customers are hearing mixed signals, and being confused, they do nothing. Says Lacey Plache:
“Stronger buying conditions are telling consumers to go ahead and make their car purchases, but a weak economic landscape is telling them to wait until later this year, or even longer. This is the battle that will determine exactly how much the auto industry will grow this year.” (Read More…)
Now we know the truth behind the rebels routing Kadafi in Libya. “British, French, Qatari and other special forces working inside Libya?” Bollocks! It was the skilled deployment of fine Chinese weaponry that turned the tide. Chinese guns made the Colonel collect the last cadres of his female bodyguards and head for wherever people head to for a last get-together with their bodyguards before their bollocks are removed in a less than surgical manner. (I am getting sidetracked. Where were we?) Ah, yes, Chinese weaponry!
Tycho over at Carnewschina found the picture above in Huanqiu.com, a Chinese site dedicated to the military side of China, and, to provide proper balance, to barely dressed members of the fairer sex. If you are into uncamouflaged Chinese guns & girls, this site’s for you! (Someone is trying to undermine my morals, and my writing focus.) (Read More…)
Edmunds’ always dead-on Autoobserver brings us the shocking news that Americans don’t drive enough. That, or they use the wrong cars. Whatever it may be, Americans are about to lose the carefully cultivated title “world’s biggest gasoline oinkers.” Gasoline consumption hit rock bottom in July!
Says Edmunds:
“U.S. demand for gasoline last month was at its lowest for July in a decade as the slower-than-expected economic recovery appeared to cause many people to either cut back on driving or buy more fuel-efficient cars. U.S. refinery gasoline production in July dropped 2.3 percent from a year earlier, marking the first year-over-year drop for 2011, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said in a report released late last week.”
There are multiple reasons for people taking a pass on gas. Let’s investigate. (Read More…)
Apparently, this is Camry week. TTAC has already thrown two of its most feared and revered auto testers, Michael “Hard Plastic Killer” Karesh and Alex “Yellow Fever” Dykes, into the battle – with similar, yet finely nuanced results. Yours truly has arrived in Tokyo, where he cools his heels (as much as a thermostat set to electricity-saving 82F allows,) until the JDM Camry is unveiled on Sept. 5 to by then totally Camry-numb members of the media.
Alas, your correspondent of the car wars has left China too early, because the global Camry conflict has shifted to the Middle Kingdom, which finds itself in search of the core Camry character. (Read More…)
The new Mercedes B-Class has been extensively discussed here, it was shown at the Shanghai Auto Show, where it found itself upstaged by the requisite Chinese copy. Slowly, it is time to show the production model. Which will happen at the Frankfurt Auto Show. After the rest of the world has seen the B-Class, now Germany can too.
When I was still working for Volkswagen, I blatantly picked up the delegations from Wolfsburg in my Eddie Bauer Expedition when they arrived at JFK. The higher paygrades were already used to it. The lower paygrades inevitably asked: “Why don’t you drive a Touareg?” While bouncing down the Van Wyck, I inevitably shouted “Silence in the third row! The Touareg doesn’t even have a third row. If I had a Touareg, you’d be sitting in a taxi.”
Soon I’d run out of excuses: If Germany’s AUTO BILD and the DetN are correctly informed, then Volkswagen will get a big SUV – big enough for Americans, even for those with a smaller wallet. (Read More…)
Conventional wisdom says that the Chinese will suck all the know-how out of their foreign joint venture partners, and once they are through with them, they’ll discard them like Dracula a bloodless virgin. As a thank you, the Chinese will flood foreign countries with cheap Chinese cars. The trouble with conventional wisdom is that it is rarely true, or wise. Actually, the Chinese are now worried that the foreigners amass too much power. “Foreign car producers have begun to take more control of their joint ventures in China, sidelining their Chinese counterparts from business partners to factory providers,” China Daily writes today. China Daily is owned by the Chinese government. (Read More…)
Someone call Homeland Security: Large segments of Americans (if we still can call them that) are willing to spend hard-earned dollars on (are you ready for that?) CHINESE cars. Market research company GfK Automotive’s did its annual Barometer of Automotive Awareness and Imagery, and found that a whopping 38 percent of the respondents would consider buying a Chinese car. Indian cars? A little less, but 30 percent ain’t nothing. That’s amongst all respondents. Once you get to Gen Y consumers, you’ll see wholesale desertion to the enemy.
Says the study:
“The openness to purchasing a Chinese and Indian vehicle is highest among Gen Y consumers, with 52 percent saying they are open to a vehicle from a Chinese automaker and 41 percent saying they are open to a vehicle from an Indian automaker.”
Imagine that. The cars aren’t even on U.S. shores, and especially basement dwellers are ready to buy them – even worse, with dad’s money. (Read More…)
My former wife was an artist. One of her shows was for the benefit of Washington DC’s National Zoo. At the opening, a society dame walked up to her.
“Love your boobies.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The lady referred to the depiction of a school of the sula nebouxii, a.k.a. the Blue Footed Booby, a water bird. Boobies can cause all kinds of misunderstandings. That thought crossed my mind as I watched the picture above.
I found it at Chinacartimes. Apparently, the picture is spreading like wildfire through the Chinese interwebs. Says CCT: (Read More…)
Today, Porsche officially disclosed top-secret pictures of the new “Neunelfer”, a.k.a. the 2012 Porsche 911. Most of these pictures have already been all over the webs. In a year, you’ll find them on Wikileaks.
In the name of completeness, here is the whole take, released today, along with the news that:
“At 48, the Porsche 911 Carrera is younger than ever: The completely redesigned generation of the sports car icon is stepping into the limelight with its flat, stretched silhouette, exciting contours and precisely designed details, yet from the very first glance it remains unmistakably a 911. True to the 911 tradition, the distinctive Porsche design language with its tendons and muscles exudes power and elegance.”
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