Car companies spend mega-bucks on marketing departments and advertising agencies, all with the aim of engaging you, the potential customer, with their brand. They want you to relate to their product easily, and a good brand fit does a nice job of greasing the tracks in that department.
I’m not a one-man marketing department, nor am I an advertising agency, but I’ve spent a LOT of time drooling over cars in my lifetime, writing about them and even working for a car company. I also have my own thoughts on brands and the promises they make. My theory is a simple one: the relationship a customer is likely to have with you, as a company, is based a lot more on their experience than it is on your words.
When I talk about experience, it doesn’t have to be an experience they’ve had first-hand, either. I don’t have to have competed in Le Mans with a Porsche to know that Porsche are extremely good at racing. What matters is that I’ve had plenty of exposure to the fact that Porsche have competed in – and even more importantly, won – a lot of races. They’ve achieved a lot in racing, and the stories about Porsche racing are told not just by Porsche (there’s a key – get others talking about you and you’ll get some of your advertising for free).
Lots of car companies have built their brand based around experiences and/or achievements. Those brand identities are action-based and they say a lot more about a car company than words written across the top of an advertisement – and before my mate Curvin O’Rielly gets mad at me, advertising’s important, too, but it’s not the focus of this article.
I think brand promises are something that takes time to build. They are the sum of years of achievement or experience, just like Porsche’s racing career. If the company’s current products align with those brand promises, then the brand experience for the customer is that much stronger. If the company’s current products don’t align with the brand promise, then the company’s sales will most likely decline as their customers’ brand experience deteriorates (and as word gets around about it).
Simple, no?
Let’s take a look at some car companies and see how their brand promise matches up to experience.
Please note that these are just my beliefs about brand promise. A brand’s promise to you is very dependent on what you know about it, what you’ve experienced with it. Some of that will be because a company has touched you directly in some way and some of it will be because your Uncle Albert had one when you were a youngster.
MINI
MINI’s brand promise is built on the qualities that made it a cult car back in the 1960’s, for being cute, simple, affordable and practical. Because it was so nimble, it was a fun car for a lot of people, too. The original MINI has an iconic look to it and still looks good today. It was used in movies to great effect because it has character, so much so that it’s seen as a symbol of its time.
Continue reading Brand promises in the Automotive Industry
