http://phillips.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/22/108logo_toyota_trucks_2.jpg

vs.

http://www.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2007/05/20070514-toyota-logo.jpg

I know the rationale probably is that the truck logo looks tougher—but Toyota is breaking a branding / marketing 101 rule…thou shalt not dilute you logo. To add further confusion—the Toyota truck logo only makes it to communication vehicles and not to the product.

And Bob Lutz couldn’t figure this out?

Why have a Pontiac Grand Prix, Buick La Crosse, and Buick Lucerne–pretty much all the same car?

Decide, let’s say that Pontiac is to be the RWD/AWD car division selling small and intermediate cars plus an improved Solstice; and make Buick the large, cushy,FWD division, including heavy-duty FWDs for stretch limo/hearse conversions (Give Caddy an exclusive ultra-plush factory-built limo for the private market that doesn’t look at all like it should smell of prom vomit in the back). Give Buick another Riviera with a basic body design not available anywhere else at GM.

SUVs/CUVs, vans,minivans belong with GMC, period. No more Pontiac Torrents and Buick Enclaves. And give Jimmy at least one SUV or CUV that can’t be bought at the Chevy store down the street.

Allow NO OVERLAPS between one PBG division and another.

Finally, banish the alpha numeric non-name. The fancier G-8 should be a Bonneville, a smaller and lighter V-6 version RWD a Catalina, a performance-oriented stripped-out Catalina shell with a big Bonneville engine and a 6-speed manual, could be a Ventura.

A simple-to-work-on RWD Pontiac compact–basically a throwback to the Falcon/ChevyII era but with a nicer interior, IRS, and bigger options list could be called the GrandAM or maybe the LeMans, and a performance-oriented version the new GTO.

I encourage you to read more deeply into the Consumer Reports quality data—-it will show that Ford quality has risen over the past few years to the point where 93% of Fords fall onConsumer Reports avg-above avg. relaibility list. Facts are a stubborn thing—just sayin.

BTW—do not disagree with you on the naming stuff—Detroit—particularly Ford is guilty of some pretty stupid branding stuff—back to the original point of the article.

P.S: And Consumer Reports also today announced it top vehicle picks for 2008.
Here are the winners.

Small sedan: Hyundai Elantra
Mid-size sedan: Honda Accord
Mid-size SUV: Hyundai Santa Fe
Mini-van: Toyota Seinna
Full size truck : Chevy Silverado

Guess this says something for the domestics and their products, huh????? Only one domestic in the bunch. And it’s a Chevy, not the sales leader Ford F-150. Very interesting indeed.

Ford’s branding didn’t change when the Taurus came along and took a failing company and made it immensely profitable. The branding stayed the same but all of a sudden Ford had a good product.

So I guess it’s both, with product being king. Toyota’s “brand” may be reliability, but that also happens to be the product…

If I were running GM, I would move all of my crummy vehicles sold primarily to fleets to one brand where it couldn’t contaminate the other brands. Say, Pontiac. Make it a fleet only brand.

Then create a unique and different image for another line- say, Buick. You could, for example, use it for a line of exclusively hybrid or exclusively diesel engines, the way Subaru has been sucessful with their All-AWD lineup. That’s because nobody knows what Buick stands for anyways. Keep Saturn as only Euro-style cars, independent of where they’re built. In time, if GM builds quality vehicles the brand will reflect the new qualities of the vehicles. GM fails today bbecause it doesn’t have the product to live up to what it’s brands claim.

Also, as an aside, I don’t think GM has too many brands, just too many vehicles. There’s no reason for Saturn to have a CUV that competes with Chevy. There are many automotive brands that do just fine with limited lineups.

IMO, if you were going to have one without the other you better toss out branding. Branding can be fixed in much shorter time, and realistically can be done by hiring outside help. The consultants will come in, see what your strengths are, and build a brand around it.

What brand will still sell after years of failure in design and engineering have educated your prospects to the fact that you build crap? Are you going to go out and sell your cars because they are “craptastic?”

Is the Branding juju supposed to be a management fix which will get everyone involved to perform better because they can see the goal? If that’s the case, then maybe I see your point.

OTOH, if your point is that lack of branding was responsible for GM to quit building in quality and reliability, I need more specifics. Even in the heydays, I don’t remember any of the GM lines being about less quality and reliability than any of the others. Do you need branding to tell everyone not to build crap? That’s too much of a stretch isn’t it?

However, that’s not what Robert’s talking about. He’s talking about the execs having a coherent set of attributes and strategies that push their engineering and marketing decisions. That’s the brand he asks about when he does interviews, and when the people he speaks with draw a blank, it speaks volumes to direction, strategy, and placement.

You can have fantastic engineering, capable manufacturing, and great styling, but if you don’t know what it is you’re building, no one will know what you’re selling. I know what Honda, BMW, Hummer, Jeep (although some recent things have made me wonder…), Toyota, Lexus, Scion, Audi, Benz, Ferrari, Volvo, and Mazda are. I have no clue what Ford, Acura, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Jaguar, Hyundai, or Kia are about. They’re all chasing something, or multiple somethings, rather than making cars that are defined by what their brand is intended to represent.

As educated consumers, we at least are able to consider cars based on their merits individually. But I think we can all look at an unnamed car hitherto unseen and identify what it is, what it should be, and stab it.

Also, when it comes to measuring internal conquest sales, when it comes to GM, the pricing and brand overlap is so rampant that the volume sellers all compete with each other, so any actually upward movement would be to low-volume sellers.

Rix: “I think the point that is being missed here is that BRAND IS BUILT ON PRODUCT. That is, you have to build a brand around product characteristics, not try to convince people of your product attributes.”

Nope, you must FIRST define your product characteristics and build it according to them. The product characteristics are defined or will define your BRAND.

Bingo. If the Big 3 had built quality and dependability into their brands like Honda and Toyota did, then they would’ve built better products. Instead they never quite knew what they were building, but they knew they had to build them cheaper in order to keep up sales.

A good brand is a roadmap that keeps the product on course. You can look at a potential product and ask, “Will this product detract from our brand, or will it further build it?” And even though the Big 3 are finally realizing the importance of quality and dependability, they still largely lack those brand roadmaps to keep them focused.

Nope, you must FIRST define your product characteristics and build it according to them. The product characteristics are defined or will define your BRAND.

And be sure you choose the right features. If you already have a product, but no brand definition, take the characteristics people prizes more and define your brand based on that, the proceed with product. Take into account that also consumer tastes changes, so you must update from time to time the brand, or at least check it.

If you don’t fix the product characteristics you have the risk of creating a product with near the same characteristics, effectively watering down your brand. Example Jeep Compass. A better product to achieve what Jeep wanted with the Compass is the Patriot, that looks like a real Jeep and have some off road ability.

Toyota, again, is a good example, right now it stands for me as quality, everyone, FWD,boring car. This way they can enter almost any market save for the luxury. They’re eating into Buick sales with the new 5 seat CUV, they went to full size trucks, and so on. They made sports cars, and were respected doing so: AE85, Celica, Supra, but they left that market. It will be interesting to see them enter that market with their current image.

detroit1701, I agree with you on the that intagibles influence the purchasing decision big way but I can’t agree with you on the reasons:

“what do your neighbors drive, what people in your profession and income level buy, what kind of image you want to portray to the world, how much money in your budget do you want to devote to a car relative to your other priorities”

1) I can care less about what my neiborghs drive. Even more if it’s an Aveo, Corolla or such. In fact I think it’s lame to see what the neighbor drives and base any purchasing decision on that.
2) Same as above.
3) Well, driving a toyota won’t give me the eccentric image I like to have. Driving a “different” brand would. So well it influences. Now I ask you: what is the image a camry owner chases? sigh
4)Status, I will never understand how an import car gives you more status over buying domestic. I don’t care about that crap either. Again, which kind of status do you seek buying a Corolla? being a cool mom?
5) The last reason is very important. Totally agree.

There are many, many factors that influence a buyer’s decision in choosing a car. Some buyers are eminently “rational”: sit down and crunch numbers, thoroughly research and cross-shop, haggle with a number of dealers, and the like.

What are the most-often missed factors are the “intangibles” — what do your neighbors drive, what people in your profession and income level buy, what kind of image you want to portray to the world, how much money in your budget do you want to devote to a car relative to your other priorities (tuition, savings, vacation, home), what does your spouse and/or best friend want you to get, etc. In other words, things that have nothing to do with perceived quality or resale value (which for these people are typically just afterthoughts to justify a decision one has already made).

For instance young (and well-paid) male professionals flock to Audis and BMWs, because (a) you want to show the world that you are successful; and (b) you want to impress women. So what if the lease payments are $550/month, the fuel economy is so-so, and repairs are astronomical, it will get you laid! (or so you think).

Similarly, a Japanese car does represent a perceived increase in status for many people over a comparable domestic.

GM dug itself into a whole, IMHO, because it lacks coherent intangible reasons to buy them. What does driving a GM / Ford car say about you? That you are pro-American? At least American trucks retain a “macho” intangible that works in so many parts of the country. The domestics have for so long deeply discounted its big-sellers that the only reason to buy one is for VALUE (a rational choice), but no other “intangible” reason.

I think Toyotas are bland, AND I am a customer. I can only speak for myself that I would trade up if there was something I really wanted at a good value. We will just have to wait and see if lots of people don’t jump on the next thing in spite of having to visit the dealer more than once in the first few years.

Rix makes a similar case to mine. My point is that you can take it even farther with the 2.8 because their brands are soooo shattered. What they MUST have is a good product.

Then, and only then, can they have something to build a brand around.

Product comes first. Toyota wasn’t always the reliable appliance brand. If that was their plan all along, I give them more credit; but, even if it were their master plan, they had to build the cars before anyone would buy into it.

Do you really think that GM would recover if they made the same cars, but managed to brand them properly? Certainly, shameless badge engineering was responsible for a good portion of the nails in their coffin, but no all of them. Look at Hummer, for instance. The whole thing really spawned off of the H2. The H2 is a spiced up Yukahoe, but people buy it in spite of that. You say it’s better branding, I say you have no brand without the H1 and H2 to build it around.

Furthermore, it is far easier to reconfirm a previous impression than to create a new one. When I get into a rental GM vehicle and feel the Chinese-Recalled-Toy grade plastic switches, it reconfirms my impression that it’s a hunk of junk. I know that past GM vehicles have had Trabant-like quality and it just confirms them. You can’t build a premium brand with inferior products.

I think the biggest threat to the domestics is not Toyota, but Hyundai. There were always people who wanted to pay the least in any vehicle class . Hyundai is taking these from the domestics. They are the ones that out-chevy’d chevy.

So there’s your recipe, a reliable car with a good support system in place. The fact that it was a pretty good drive on good on gas were a bonus.

Since we’re talking about brand image, are you denying the efficacy of the “halo car” phenomenon?

The GT got (and gets) fantastic reviews and certainly earned Ford some positive reputation among the gearheads. The Supra may have lost money, but the so-called “fast and furious crowd” idolizes it more than anything but the Skyline. You can’t get better street cred.

Granted, those examples really only apply to customers who keep up on car news, but there’s also the (supposed) effect of drawing people in to Ford dealers (e.g.) to gawk at GTs in order to sell them Mustangs (or Fusions, or whatever).

Anybody with more advertising smarts than me want to chime in?

It’s not just going after “metrosexuals” and women that has been a finacial drain on Ford and others.

Actually, going after “manly men” is not profitable either. Now, maybe in the pickup department, although that market is shrinking.

No, I’m talking about muscle cars. Heavy duty sports cars by pedestrian manufacturers (that is, the Detroit 3, not Porsche or Ferrari) always lose money. They are expensive to design and sell in small numbers. The Ford GT lost Ford many millions.

Toyota doesn’t play that game. The Supra was an excellent car. But it wasn’t profitable. Toyota realized that entire segment wasn’t profitable, so they just stopped making cars in that segment. They get a lot of criticism for doing so, but if you look at the Scrooge McDuck money pit full of the profits they made from selling ten bazillion Camrys and Corollas, you can tell they made the right decision.

Leading contender: Acura/Honda NSX. A legitimately great car in many respects, a real rival for a contemporary 911 in performance, and it pretty clearly sent some shockwaves through Maranello (when the F355 came out Ferrari management was pretty upfront about their wanting to make sure they didn’t lose out to a mere Honda in “everyday supercar” performance). And yet it struggled to find a market for more than a decade before Honda finally gave up. Why? Because the customer image of Honda — zippy, astutely engineered everyday cars — couldn’t easily stretch to encompass the notion of a $75K+ sports car. If Ferrari had built it and badged it as a Ferrari Dino 306, it would have been a hit for them.

Runner-up: Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo, Gen3 Mazda RX-7, Toyota Supra Turbo, Mitsubishi GTO/3000GT. Again, scorching performance, advanced technology, and a good dose of day-to-day livability (although the RX-7 tests the latter — on icy roads it’s a widowmaker). But buyers were apathetic, mostly because of (again) price point and lack of cachet. Even as these Japanese supercars were dying on the vine, the Germans were bringing in the Benz SLK, BMW Z3, Porsche Boxster, and Audi TT, which were quite successful. The Germans cost just as much as the Japanese cars and their raw performance was generally somewhat inferior, but they won out on brand appeal for that price point. And ven if Corolla and Celica buyers had wanted to trade up for a Supra, it would have been too much of a reach.

Consolation prize: Subaru SVX. Funky, Giugiaro-styled AWD Japanese Thunderbird that was greeted with a near-universal cry of “$30,000 for a Subaru?” Granted, it bowed just as demand for big, lazy coupes was sinking fast, and Subaru hamstrung it with some stupid blunders (mouse belts instead of airbags, no manual transmission, autobox stretched way beyond its torque capacity), but its major problem was that it was too weird for Subaru’s traditional conservative snow belt drivers and had no badge cachet for the $30-$40K coupe shopper.

None of these were bad products (in many cases, far from it), but they were out of step with what their brands could support, and they died for it.

I still don’t get “new customer ratio.” Can someone define that for me?

On the one hand, you (and many other automotive writers) bemoan conquests from other brands within a company as wasteful self-competition.
On the other hand, TTAC and others wax nostalgic about the “car for every purse and purpose” days, when a customer was intended to move, for example, from a Chevy to a Pontiac, an Olds, a Buick, and finally a Cadillac as their age and budget increased.
If this was as perfect a strategy as everyone seems to think, GM (and the others) would have had huge internal conquest numbers because of the strength of their brand architecture.

Hence, I submit that conquests are really only relevant when they come from other companies (which are ultimately the competing entities, anyway), while brand loyalty should be considered from a corporate perspective as well as by make.

I am not trying to deny or downplay the significant problem of internal competition. Rather, I am suggesting that internal conquests, as a statistic, can be indicative of proper branding strategy.
Therefore, there needs to be some other way to represent detrimental internal competition. Maybe it’s a nebulous more issue suited to abstract discussion than statistics. Maybe someone here has an idea for a better statistic…?

One I can think of is the Crown Vic/Grand Marquis – if the worst you can say about a car is old people like them, I’d take that.

Of course Ford is running away from them as fast as possible because Ford doesn’t want people who like those vehicles as customers.

The mindless pursuit of “metrosexuals” and women runs Ford marketing today.