Monday, March 10, 2008

Chrysler's Marketing Con Job

WHAT KIND OF STRATEGY AND ADVERTISING DO YOU GET WHEN THE MINDS OF THE FEW TRY TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE MINDS OF THE MANY?

I was feeling kind of bored by blogging so I hadn't posted much recently. You know, you get tired of watching marketers do the same things at the same companies different ways year after year. But Sunday, I sat next to an interesting gentleman at my daughter's National Junior League Basketball Championship game (yes, we won). Turns out he's the head of finance for Toyota and has to sign off on all this stuff. So he asked me what I did for a living and I told him I could make every $35 marketing dollars work like a $100. We started talking about what was wrong with car ads and decided to pick on Chysler's rebirth led by Deborah Wahl Meyer, VP-CMO.

Her new direction latches on to lifetime powertrain warranties? What's wrong with that? Well, no one really cares. With nearly 70% of all vehicles leased these days i'm going to turn my new car in in 3 to 5 years anyway - not to mention the fact that bread and butter cars like the Accord and Camry are made so well that they don't even break into a sweat by the fifth year. So who would care about a lifetime Chrysler powertrain warranty? Only the very feeble minded. But then again, that's the kind of strategy and advertising you get when the minds of the few try to communicate to the minds of the many. Conclusion: Another case of a marketer failing to do proper consumer marketing homework. That's the kind of stuff that gets me excited again!

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