MarketingDoctor.tv
John Tantillo's Brand Winner... And Loser: The Auto Industry and The Tea Party
Posted by The Marketing Doctor at 4/13/2009 8:09 PM 
Categories: Branding
Tags: Hyundai marketing doctor build-it-and-they-will-come brand Susan Docherty john tantillo tea fox forum target market bailout Rick Santelli GM tea party symbol
Categories: Branding
Tags: Hyundai marketing doctor build-it-and-they-will-come brand Susan Docherty john tantillo tea fox forum target market bailout Rick Santelli GM tea party symbol
Brand Winner… | And Loser |
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John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of the Week:
Winner: Auto Industry
Loser: Tea Party
Folks, without further ado:
The Winner
With GM on the verge of bankruptcy, it might seem strange to be declaring the auto industry this week’s winner, but my long-term marketing antennae detect hope in the future, based on some present trends.
I’m talking about the auto show last week.
Gone is much of the glitz, replaced by a return to the fundamentals of making and selling cars. Automakers like Hyundai are benefiting from a return to frugality and value.
But it’s not austerity that makes me hopeful; it’s responsiveness. In other words, for the first time in a long time, the auto industry is being forced to actually do real marketing —all of them seem to be talking about —you guessed it— what their customers actually want.
The auto industry is in a position where basic assumptions about how they do business must be re-examined.
This is great news, because what I believe we’ll see emerge out of the current crisis are car companies that will work extra hard to find their Target Markets and then meet those needs, rather than decide what those needs are in some design cubicle. (See my previous post on the “We build it, you buy it” model here, and my post on GM’s apology to its Target Market here.)
The old-time auto show was about buzz, hype and parading prototypes that generated excitement but had very little chance of reaching the market.
Gone are the days (I hope) of the build-it-and-they-will-come model.
The new auto show (like the industry that I predict will emerge) is about constantly making a case for itself and its products. After all, real marketing is about being responsive to need, not about being a taste-maker or a product-pusher.
I’ll leave you with Susan Docherty, a vice president at GM, who said this to Reuters about what she did at the auto show: "You saw me doing a PowerPoint presentation and talking from the heart. It was nothing fancy, there were no dancing girls. there were no parades and bands and things that you may have seen at auto shows in the past."
Enough said, and swing by www.marketingdoctor.tv if you haven’t visited us for a while.
The Loser
For this week’s loser, I want to re-direct you over to my post at Fox Forum on the “tea party” of 2009.
It’s a fad that will flop.
Here’s an excerpt:
I’d bet my Borsalino hat that five years from now, the tea party of 2009 is going to be considered little more than a fad that flopped. In fact, it shouldn’t even be compared to the monumental event that kicked our great country off with a rebellious bang.
The one thing I know Karl Marx got right was that history repeats itself: the first time as tragedy; the second time as farce.
This time it’s a farce. Like anything marketed, popular movements need a symbol that resonates widely and deeply. The connection can’t be complicated or second-hand. It’s got to have clout, and it’s got to instantly make sense to everyone.
For colonial Americans, tea was a powerful symbol. It was something they drank a lot of; it was taxed heavily; and this taxation was something they had no say over. Throwing it overboard said everything that needed to be said. They didn’t steal it; they rejected it. This was a statement that went straight to the British purse strings. It might have looked spontaneous, but it was sophisticated and made perfect sense in the context of the time.
Tea has nothing to do with our frustrations today. If tea was taxed at 100%, most of us could still afford to drink it. Unfortunately, the tea of this year’s tea party is just a recycled symbol and, not only that, this symbol doesn’t make much sense.
After all, the colonists had no legal recourse to object to the taxation that was making their lives miserable. We do, even if it means an agonizingly long wait for the next election. Before you protest, you’ve got to figure out what you’re protesting, and the 2009 tea party simply doesn’t help anyone do that. Being angry isn’t enough. In marketing and branding, you must be for something — from there you can create a plan that can capture the hearts and minds of most Americans.
The second big problem with the tea party movement is its origin. As we all know, it began in the media with Rick Santelli’s rant on live TV. It did not begin with the equivalent of Rosa Parks on a bus (a very vivid protest symbol to a very real injustice). It is always better to start with reality: a “real” person standing for something, not a “media” person ranting about something.
In other words, the tea party isn’t really grass roots, and these days this perception matters —the last election showed us this both in the Obama camp’s powerful pull strategy and also with…
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And remember, it’s always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
Being angry isn’t enough. In marketing and branding, you must be FOR something.
Trackbacks
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6/8/2009 9:35 AM
MarketingDoctor.tv wrote:
Brand Winner… And Loser John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Winner: GMLoser: Levi’s Folks, I thought the piece I did over at Fox Forum this week was worth repeating as this week’s winner, and then there’s Levi’s making a really jaw-dropping marketing error. So without further ado…The WinnerI really can’t believe it… Everywhere you look, General Motors is being put into an early grave.How wrong can you be?Consumers love their Caddies, Chevies and Chevy trucks. Yes, folks, they love these brands, ... -
6/9/2009 1:07 PM
MarketingDoctor.tv wrote:
Brand Winner… And Loser John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Winner: GMLoser: Levi’s Folks, I thought the piece I did over at Fox Forum this week was worth repeating as this week’s winner, and then there’s Levi’s making a really jaw-dropping marketing error. So without further ado…The WinnerI really can’t believe it… Everywhere you look, General Motors is being put into an early grave.How wrong can you be?Consumers love their Caddies, Chevies and Chevy trucks. Yes, folks, they love these brands, and ...
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