Showing posts with label auto marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label auto marketing. Show all posts

Friday, January 31, 2014

Is it the ads? Or the cars?

Was reading an automotive blog, the kind that talks cars and Detroit.  The writer (ranter) went on, and on, and further on, lambasting the advertising done by one of the big three.  He probably has a point, I have seen a lot of car company TV ads, which are so soft-sell, that I couldn't figure out who the car company was, let alone what the car was.  You know the ones,  the color has been faded out to black and white, soft focus, soft lighting, an empty road, some shrubs, and perhaps a Prius turning into sticks and leaves and blowing away in the wind.  Never give the company name or the car name in the voice over.  Never show the logos, or the car.  
   But.  Let's be real.   First you have to have a decent car before you can do a decent ad.  The cars coming out of Detroit's big three, are bland, bland, bland.  Plain melted jelly bean styling, painted light gray or mud color,  too high, too short, and all tilted forward on their noses.  Huge plastic bumpers.  Clearly styled by committee. 
   A good car is different from it's competitors.  In the cheapo econo-box class, we have dozens of look alike, over priced little go carts.  Then we have ONE outstanding car, the BMW Mini Cooper. The retro styling is far from original, but it sells like hot cakes, commanding a $25K price for a very tiny two adult/two children seating car.  Whereas the Chevy Sonic ( yes it's car, not a hedgehog)  only commands a $14 k price.   Coolness sells, the Mini Cooper is cool.
   The secret to success in the selling of cars, is coolness.  The cool cars sell.  The plain vanilla jelly bean cars don't.
   Detroit's challange is to produce more cool cars and less boring ones.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Light Duty Trucks or Light Trucks

Just watched a GM ad on Fox. Camera pans across a car showroom full of shiny pickups and SUV's. The voice over describes them as "Light Duty trucks". Not good. "Heavy duty" is good, "Light Duty" says the truck is gonna fall apart upon hitting its first deep chuckhole. The voice over should have called 'em "light trucks" which is good. Heavy trucks have 18 wheels and won't back into your garage which doesn't help sales appeal.
I can understand the ad writers making this goof, but how do it get by all the suits at GM?
Or are the GM suits as clueless as the admen?