Priceonomics Details Subaru's Lesbian Marketing Love Affair

Mark Stevenson
by Mark Stevenson

Subaru didn’t always enjoy the recession-beating success it’s famous for today. In the ’90s, sales at Subaru were in the tank, and marketers in the company needed to do something different.

After identifying core groups interested in its cars, Subaru found something curious: lesbians, for whatever reason, loved Subaru. For our edutainment, Priceonomics has detailed the history of Subaru loving those lesbians right back.

Aside from the internet trope that dictates at least one Mustang driver must crash at every Cars and Coffee event, there can’t be a much stronger automotive stereotype than lesbians loving Subarus. It’s a stereotype that may or may not have cajoled TTAC’s founder into comparing the grille of the B9 Tribeca with a certain part of the female anatomy, and it certainly fueled a job-killing headline of another TTAC E-I-C in the recent past. (I’m not linking to it, but I’m sure you can find it yourself if you really must read it.)

Yet, sometimes stereotypes — especially when it comes to marketing to certain demographics — exist for a reason. In the case of Subaru, its director of advertising Tim Bennett and gay-market specialist ad agency Mulryan/Nash transformed the automaker’s marketing message to develop wink-and-nod messages to the lesbian and gay communities after identifying groups of buyers who skew toward Subaru.

From Pricenomics:

In the 1990s, Subaru’s unique characteristic was that the company increasingly made all-wheel-drive standard on all its cars. When Subaru marketers went searching for people willing to pay a premium for all-wheel-drive, they identified four core groups who were responsible for half of the company’s American sales: teachers and educators, healthcare professionals, IT professionals, and “rugged individualists” (outdoorsy types).

Then they discovered a 5th: lesbians.

“When we did the research, we found pockets of the country like Northampton, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon, where the head of the household would be a single person—and often a women,” says Bennett. When Subaru marketers talked to these customers, they realized these women buying Subarus were lesbian.

Subaru crafted its marketing to identify with lesbian buyers without offending the sensibilities of conservatives.

However, it wasn’t an easy plan to put in motion.

The fascinating story is detailed at Pricenomics. Trust me — it’s worth a read.

h/t to Steve

Mark Stevenson
Mark Stevenson

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  • April S April S on May 24, 2016

    Now I know why I owned three subarus. :) 1976 GF Hardtop 1978 DL Coupe 1993 Loyale sedan

  • Jim brewer Jim brewer on May 24, 2016

    Saw an old Top Gear episode that went on and on about about how the Subaru was the knock around car of choice of the landed gentry. Had the same "everybody knows" kind of stereotyping, too. Weird. The explanation, in case you were wondering is that Subaru couldn't afford a conventional dealer network at first, sold through farm implement dealers. Rich country folk would buy one for use by first hand, or whatever they were called in Britain, and then decided that they liked them for themselves...

  • Joe This is called a man in the middle attack and has been around for years. You can fall for this in a Starbucks as easily as when you’re charging your car. Nothing new here…
  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
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