The Truth About Automotive Marketing

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

Maranello, we have a problem. Ferrari sales are down – way down – and waiting lists are evaporating. It’s not difficult to lay the blame for the sales meltdown on the “global credit crisis.” But the Scuderia must shoulder a good portion of the blame. Demand for the F430, particularly the Spider, has virtually disappeared following the arrival of the Ferrari California retractable hardtop. As it turns out, most F430 buyers didn’t care so much about the F430’s mid-engined balance, peerless on-track performance or Schumacher-tested suspension. They were buying the F430 because it was the cheapest Ferrari. And now that there is a cheaper one, they’re buying that instead. What we have here, as Strother Martin might say, is failure to understand the customer.

Behind the public façade of three-martini lunches and the endless drone of blabbermouthing focus-group research, automotive-industry marketing is a tough job. The marketing man (or woman) is caught between the Scylla of fickle customer demand and a Charybdis of stubborn engineers, stingy accountants and mercurial management. His product is rarely the best one available. He must increase sales by reaching out to new buyers without infuriating current customers.

Our intrepid marketroid may surmount all of these obstacles, triumph over the previous generation’s reliability record, obscure the unfortunate styling of the wagon variant, and convince the press to report favorably on cupholder count while neglecting to mention the fifty-dollar Korean original-equipment tires, only to see his baby stumble over the final, most critical hurdle: the omnipresent gap between perception and reality.

This is the black magic of the marketing biz, what Orwell called “doublethink,” the Nurburgring of metal-moving. Every brand, every model, every trim level is sold to two buyers: the imaginary buyer and the real one.

The impossibly beautiful and perfect forty-year-old woman who fairly bubbles out of her Christmas-morning negligee upon spotting a red-ribboned new Lexus SUV in her driveway; the square-jawed, Vacheron-Constantin-wearing man’s man who attentively pilots his Nine Eleven down a rainy autobahn; the quartet of twenty-something models without which no Jeep Wrangler would be complete-– imaginary buyers, all of them.

Next to them we find the ephemeral best selves presented on the Internet: the fellow who claims to dominate twenty trackdays a year in his Elise but in reality holds up the hind end of just a few Novice sessions; the people who have ten cars in their “sig” but neglect to mention that nine of them are in the actual possession of distant relatives; the woman who faithfully buys the same car her neighbors do while claiming safety, reliability, or economy as the reasons.

Real buyers are far less interesting. They’re primarily concerned with the cheap shine of perceived prestige, the dimly understood terror of major mechanical difficulty, and the hard graft of discounted pricing.

Many marketers make the classical mistake of falling in love with their own creations. Who would have thought that a relatively unlovely, pudgy-hipped hardtop convertible would displace the disco volante F430 Spider? Only somebody who understands real Ferrari owners.

It’s a mistake made by manufacturers far less romantically inclined than the Scuderia. Stung by criticism of the tepid first-generation “Quaalude,” Honda slaved to make each successive Prelude faster, more involving and more perfectly attuned to the sensibilities of its enthusiasts– only to see the model’s sales slaughtered by the Accord Coupe. The imaginary Prelude buyer was a corner-carver; the real Prelude buyer wanted a two-door Honda with a trunk.

Cadillac, as a brand, is almost indelibly associated with the V-8 engine. But once the 3.6 direct-injection mill arrived in the STS, the Northstar version of the same car became showroom poison. Real Caddy buyers are more than happy to cut the cylinder count and save a buck.

Ford’s marketing corps had distinct customers in mind for the Edge, Flex, and Taurus X; in reality, eighty percent of the buyers for any of the three are also serious buyers for the others.

Every time Toyota allows the Camry to grow bigger, heavier, cheaper, and floatier, they stray further from the tidy perfectionism of the landmark 1992 model – and the car finds its way into more garages as a result.

As the American automotive market goes from bad to worse in 2009, expect more and more manufacturers to demand additional pragmatism from their marketing departments.

From the enthusiast perspective, automakers may soon trim big engines, manual transmissions and thirty-two-millimeter swaybars from new-model programs. Since most people can be bullied into buying a silvery-greyish car with a grayish-black partial-leather interior, automakers’ current (and despicable) lack of real color and interior-material choices will become even more restrictive.

Voltaire warned us that “the best is the enemy of the good.” The reverse is also true. The poseur Ferrari California is the enemy of the poised F430; the clumsy Scion tC was the death of the sublime Celica GT-S; the everyday Accord Coupe drove a stake into the exquisite Prelude’s heart.

Or perhaps that’s wrong. The American car buyer finds himself in the position of Fight Club’s narrator at the movie’s end. We “see” the pistol held to our head by the manufacturers, the dealers, the marketers. But they aren’t really holding the gun. We are. If you want the automakers to keep building the kind of cars you really want, buy one.

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • Plunk10 Plunk10 on Jan 08, 2009

    If you'd like to see an example of the pricing on non-automobile Ferrari products, take a stroll through the dealership inside of Wynn hotel, Las Vegas, NV. A standard umbrella with the Ferrari logo was $250, when I visited in 2006. They also charged $10 just to browse the showroom floor.

  • Mjolnir Mjolnir on Jan 13, 2009

    I'm as guilty as the Marketing "gurus" who fall for the hype. I adore the Scuderia, the Porsche GT cars 9GT2, GT3, GT3RS), the Z06, Honda "Type R" cars as well as the crotch rocket motorbikes. I *AM* aware and I've stated LONG AGO that the public dreams Sports Cars but they truly desire GTs (i.e., Grand Touring cars) and there is a world of difference - as most here will already know. Few will tolerate the noise and harsh ride of a "proper" sports car. And that's okay. GTs are, well, very damned nice. Since 99.9% don't open track or autocross and those that do spend 99% of their time driving on public roads the Grand Touring car is just about perfect. Except for the headbangers such as myself and the few other likeminded people I communicate with on obscure websites and EVO magazine subscribers. One would have thought that the Marketing types would know this... they did and they do. Well, some of the persons involved did and do. I was not marketing - I was P/T NVH R&D but I'm an unapologetic, gamebred sports car & sports bike enthusiast. You know, the kinda guy that's NEEDED in the Auto Industry. Not to build my personal IMSA GTP car with 'plates but to UNDERSTAND interpret the AUTO OWNER's requirements and engineer/develop them. The engineers I worked with DID NOT KNOW. The Marketing Dept was as much full of attractive flakes as anything else - except persons who lived to be around, engineer & develop better vehicles. And upper management? I wouldn't follow them to the restroom. Great article, btw. Us enthusiasts are an exceedingly tiny minority and I understand why we're neglected for high volume sales. I just don't like it. Ferrari is unique. Exceedingly so. However, they should know that cars such as the F430 is "relatively new" to them and that Ferrari made it's mark with GT cars unlike Porsche who did so with it's lightweight track stars. Perhaps Ferrari is heading in the proper direction: several front-engined, high performance GTs and the "entry" mid-engined sports car with a track special version of same added every now and then. Like Porsche is doing now. Honda: Oh how the "mighty" have neglected me... I adore my Acura ITR; would love to have something else in a similar vein from Honda. C'mon, Honda... I think I'll go test drive a Civic Si today...

  • Slavuta Inflation creation act... 2 thoughts1, Are you saying Biden admin goes on the Trump's MAGA program?2, Protectionism rephrased: "Act incentivizes automakers to source materials from free-trade-compliant countries and build EVs in North America"Question: can non-free-trade country be a member of WTO?
  • EBFlex China can F right off.
  • MrIcky And tbh, this is why I don't mind a little subsidization of our battery industry. If the American or at least free trade companies don't get some sort of good start, they'll never be able to float long enough to become competitive.
  • SCE to AUX Does the WTO have any teeth? Seems like countries just flail it at each other like a soft rubber stick for internal political purposes.
  • Peter You know we’ve entered the age of self driving vehicles When KIAs go from being stolen to rolling away by themselves.
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