Superbrands 2004 - Brand Autopsy

AUTOMOBILES
GM’s Pontiac division last year brought back the muscular
GTO, and this fall is replacing another aging icon, the Grand Am,
with the G6. At Ford, the sedan push centers around the long-awaited
replacement for the faded Taurus: The Five Hundred, along with
its cousin, Freestyle, bowing this summer and fall.
At DaimlerChrysler, 2003 was a year they’d prefer to forget.
Chrysler ended its estimated $12 million campaign for Pacifica
last year just three months after the launch. Arnell Group produced
moody ads featuring chanteuse Celine Dion and an elliptical
tagline, “Drive = Love.” But rather than living up to its hype as
evidence of the company’s turn up-market, Pacifica proved to be
a high-priced flop. A combination of ineffectual advertising and
an overzealous pricing strategy with starting tags over $40,000
hobbled the launch, forcing the company to offer lower-priced versions
last fall. By year-end, sales topped out at 56,656, per Ward’s,
some 3,500 fewer than Chrysler execs had anticipated.
The lack of momentum didn’t help Chrysler’s new coupe either.
Crossfire last year sold as briskly as tofu dogs in Argentina, leaving
dealers with considerable oversupply.
Jim Schroer, evp-global sales and marketing,
was out by June. In came Joe Eberhardt,
from Mercedes’ U.K. operations, who
promised to focus on product, back off from
incentives and price vehicles lower. He
bowed the Chrysler 300, replacing the Concorde
and 300M; the convertible Crossfire;
and the 2004 Town & Country minivan,
with a feature called “Sto-n-go” that allows
both third- and second-row seats to disappear
into the floor. Chrysler’s new tagline:
“Innovation comes standard.” The 300 Series sedan sold more than
22,600 units in its first two full months (April and May) this year.
In the realm of innovation, the gas/electric combo vehicles
known as hybrids took a major step forward. In its 2004 Prius, Toyota
proved that hybrid doesn’t necessarily mean niche. The company
sold 24,627 of the cars last year, and in the first four months
of 2004, sold 13,602 units, about 400 more than the Avalon. A
$50 million launch campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi, Torrance,
Calif., showed the car zooming in and out of black holes with actor
Jeff Goldblum intoning: “Good news for planet Earth.” Prius gets
60 miles per gallon in the city, with almost no emissions.
Toyota also bowed its quirky Scion brand with a regional strat-
BRAND
COMPANY NAME,
LOCATION
Superbrands
egy aimed at young buyers. Now available nationwide, Scion has
just launched its third vehicle, tC, with its first national TV effort
via Attik, San Francisco. The company sold close to 17,000 xA
and xB cars through April, and is hoping to sell 60,000 Scion
vehicles overall this year.
For the first time last year, Toyota sold more vehicles worldwide
than Ford, taking over as the No. 2 global automaker. Toyota
wound up with total year-end sales of 1.9 million vehicles, a
6.3% improvement over last year and its best sales performance
in its 46-year history. So far this year in the U.S., Toyota-brand
vehicles are up 11% and Lexus sales are up 21%.
Elsewhere, it was hardly a banner year for Hyundai (whose overall
sales dropped 3.6%), Mitsubishi and Volkswagen. Mitsubishi
suffered through an awful period with sales down
26% in the U.S., partly due to its strategy of giving
loans to risky borrowers. In a surprise move, Mitsubishi
North American CEO Pierre Gagnon was
fired less than a year after consolidating operations.
In his stead came former
Hyundai Motor America CEO
Finbarr O’Neill, who vowed to
salvage the company’s books,
focus less on youth marketing
and more on pitching vehicles for their features,
directing agency Deutsch to conduct
more product-focused advertising.
Instead of young hipsters darting
Sales oasis: VW named the company’s first through cityscapes to rave music, ads for the
SUV, Touareg, after Saharan nomads. brand’s Lancer Evo compact showed a 30something
couple asking for directions from
a group of hooligans beneath an underpass. O’Neill and his
svp-marketing, Ian Beavis, launched a product-centric cliff-hanger
ad comparing the Galant to Toyota Camry that ran during
Super Bowl XXXVIII.
Without Gagnon’s triple zero deals and incentives, though,
Mitsubishi is still in free fall, with sales off 22.8% this year through
April. In the red, Mitsubishi needed a bailout from 37% stakeholder
DaimlerChrysler. Initially, Chrysler CEO Juergen
Schrempp argued in favor of the bailout. Several others, including
former Chrysler COO Wolfgang Bernhardt, whom Schrempp
had tapped to lead Mercedes-Benz starting this summer, disagreed.
Schrempp backed down, but this month, Bernhardt’s
LEAD AGENCY,
LOCATION
LUXURY
1. Lexus Toyota Motor Sales, Torrance, CA Team One, El Segundo, CA 259,755 $247.4 7.29 63% 6.42 53.8
2. BMW BMW, Woodcliff Lake, NJ Fallon, Minneapolis 240,859 129.9 7.25 65% 6.41 54.6
3. Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz, Montvale, NJ Merkley Newman Harty, New York 218,921 139.4 7.30 69% 6.26 54.2
4. Cadillac General Motors, Detroit Chemistri, Bloomfield Hills, MI 216,090 204.4 6.95 77% 5.85 51.3
5. Acura American Honda, Torrance, CA Rubin Postaer, Santa Monica, CA 170,918 217.3 6.86 55% 6.26 51.2
6. Lincoln Ford Motor, Dearborn, MI Young & Rubicam, Irvine, CA 158,839 138.5 6.90 65% 5.77 50.2
7. Volvo Ford Motor, Dearborn, MI Euro RSCG MVBMS, New York 134,586 53.0 6.94 64% 5.80 49.0
8. Infiniti Nissan North America, Gardena, CA TBWA\Chiat\Day, Playa Del Rey, CA 118,655 182.3 6.90 44% 6.07 49.7
9. Audi Audi, Auburn Hills, MI McKinney & Silver, Raleigh, NC 86,421 79.2 6.77 54% 5.54 45.8
10. Jaguar Ford, Dearborn, MI Young & Rubicam, Irvine, CA 54,655 84.2 7.05 58% 5.75 47.9
Sources: Ward’s Automotive Reports (sales); TNS/CMR (media); Harris Interactive/EquiTrend: QxFxPI=E (see key, page S18)
www.brandweek.com JUNE 21, 2004 S23
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