Back Seat Marketers

Is it too late for the Detroit 3 to tune up its marketing strategy? In good times and bad, having Unique Selling Propositions (USP’s) are important part of maintaining and growing share. USP’s create a reason to talk to consumers via advertising. In bad times, brand campaigns for the sake of brand recognition die, but ad campaigns that talk about products that are different need to keep on talking.

Unit volume declines for US auto sales are off by so much that I’m not sure you can advertise a way out of it. The New York Times reports that unit volumes may be headed for a new low normal level which means people will be buying less cars, less often. What a company under stress does shows its character, and Ford is hinting that its stripes are in listening to its consumers and adding features that enhance the user experience. (See: the F-150)

While a frustrating time, and a reason for GM and Chrysler to pull back. Ford is running a solid F-150 advertising campaign that makes me think that it is the one of the D3 that will do better through the recovery than the others.

By comparison GM is further piercing the corporate veil of its brands, thus reducing each brand’s uniqueness.

GM will have to ask itself if GM will be its master brand for national advertising while Saturn, Buick, etc. will end up being sub-brands. Are they unique anymore? Once brands start getting presented on the same web page and TV screen, they start to be considered replaceable which doesn’t create uniqueness.

Back to Ford: On track and nice work.