(UPDATED FROM 8/21/2020)
Peter DeLorenzo (2018) has argued that brand management “is now the Number 1 priority in this business.” The reason is that a “democratization of technology and luxury” has leveled the playing field. This is not to say that design, engineering and product development are unimportant. Just that brand management is the “most meaningful ingredient” in order for “the effort to come together.”
This worldview can be a double-edged sword. The good news is that the rise of brand management has largely killed off badge engineering. This is because — duh — it undercuts the integrity of a brand.
The bad news is that brand management in the wrong hands can result in cars being treated like packaged cereals. The color and shape of the cereal and the design of its box can overwhelm other considerations — like nutritional value.
Brand management put to rest dying brands
Brand management should receive an award for putting a handful of dying American brands out of their misery. Plymouth and Mercury had been badge engineered into irrelevance. Pontiac and Oldsmobile still had some brand equity when they were killed, but clearly General Motors no longer had the scale to maintain it.
Brand management has pressed automakers to make some tough choices. For example, the Chrysler Corporation’s long use of badge engineering was primarily rooted in vainly trying to maintain two dealer networks (go here for further discussion).
VW New Beetle: Brand management went too far
The trouble with brand management is that, like styling, it can become the tail that wags the dog. Consider Volkswagen’s “new” Beetle. The car was considered a clever way to reengage owners of the much-loved original Beetle. At least for a while.
Alas, the new Beetle was a vapid caricature of the original. It sort-of looked like the old one but lacked any of the qualities that made it such a revolutionary car. The new Beetle was naught but an exercise in cheap nostalgia. Original Beetle owners were treated as shallow people.
This is not real brand management, which builds on a brand’s authenticity rather than depletes it with emotional manipulations. That, in turn, requires a clear understanding of how cars impact people’s lives. It’s not enough to come up with a clever cereal box design.
A similar argument can be made against recent “pony cars.” These have become the automotive equivalent of middle-aged fat men in swim bikinis. The fake logo at the top of the page better symbolizes the 21st Century Mustang than the real one.
Until recently Tesla had top-notch brand management
One of the best recent examples of brand management was Tesla. The upstart automaker built up an exceptionally loyal base of supporters because it responded to a need that for years was mostly ignored by the rest of the auto industry — climate-friendly vehicles.
That many automotive experts have been surprised by how well Tesla has done has reflected the groupthink which has pervaded the industry regarding climate change — and issues of social responsibility in general. Unfortunately, Tesla’s brand has more recently been tarnished by a steady drip, drip, drip of controversial statements and actions by its head, Elon Musk.
Groupthink was also at play when domestic automakers failed to understand the appeal of the original VW Beetle. This car is a good example of authentic branding that connects to the substance of people’s lives.
For example, VW ads emphasized how the automaker rejected planned obsolescence — which benefitted Beetle owners by lowering costs. This was a radical break with Detroit tradition that helped cement the Beetle’s cult-like status.
Also see ‘Satire of a 1960 VW ad essentially mimics marketing for U.S. compacts’
Branding can only be as authentic as the automaker, and as innovative as its products. This goes a long way toward explaining why so much contemporary branding tends to be vapid. There’s not a lot of there there to brand.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on Aug. 21, 2020 and updated on Nov. 21, 2023.
RESOURCES
- DeLorenzo, Peter; 2018. “The Auto Extremist Brand Image Meter VII: The ‘Not Good’ Edition.”Auto Extremist. Posted June 4.
The tricky thing with “brand management” is what it means in practice. There are many potential aspects and approaches, and what you mean and I mean and Pete means and what Ron Z means and so on can all be different things.
From what you’ve written, your focus and mine are likely similar, on building an coherent whole that the intended buyers find meaningful. I don’t think many people at GM understood brands this way. And I have no idea what Pete means by the term except that he doesn’t like it because he sees it as treating cars like toothpaste, whatever that means.
If it means just paying attention to the exterior appearance–which you seem to also be saying above–then that’s pretty much what Detroit did with the bulk of its products from about 1960 on. The designers from Harley Earl through Chuck Jordan certainly argued that it didn’t much matter what was under the sheetmetal when it came to selling cars. So hardly new.
As for Ron Z, he initially thought his brand managers would have control over the product. But when it turned out that they had limited power vis-a-vis the VLEs created about the same time and the broader engineering and design organizations, they increasingly focused on the other three P’s. (But got blamed for what was done with the product anyway.) The major disaster then was Ron Z’s emphasis on treating the model rather than the make as the brand and splitting GM’s ad budget into about 80 poorly coordinated pieces. A coordinated bi-level strategy was needed, but lacking.
Michael, thank you for taking the time to offer some nuanced thoughts. All I’d add is to underline that I think Detroit — and, increasingly — foreign automakers — have placed too much emphasis on styling in isolation to other product attributes that are arguably more important in the life cycle of an automobile.
One of the good aspects of the recent burst of EV startups is that they have been more likely to apply a holistic approach to car design that more creatively integrates function with form. Not all of the approaches will succeed, but the industry badly needs more experimentation rather than endless reiterations of mainstream car design. Truth be told, how many variations on, say, the mid-sized crossover does the US market need, particularly when the substantive differences are so minor?
One trend I dislike are people going gaga over EVs with the an artificially long dash-to-axle, and thus a long hood. Sure, these proportions can be very attractive on a conventional car. But with an EV there’s no functional justification–in fact packaging is unnecessarily compromised–so their employment on one really rubs me the wrong way. It’s the opposite of exploring new forms. It’s an admission that a new form is either beyond the designers’ imaginations (not likely) or perceived as too risky in terms of customer appeal (very likely).
On the amount of design variation, my personal interpretation is that it has long been minimal in the US market. How different were the many iterations of the American full-size sedan in any given year of the 1950s and 1960s? Or of intermediate coupes in the latter decade? People remember being able to more easily tell them apart, but this is due to other factors:
1. There were far fewer models / makes
2. People put a lot more effort into noting the shapes of grilles, tail lights, and so forth
3. Manufacturers often kept the above consistent from year to year
I agree. It’s unfortunate when automakers only gingerly make use of the new design opportunities of a nascent technology.
To your last point, that’s a big reason why I’ve complained about weak enforcement of federal anti-trust laws in the early postwar period. The decimation of independent automakers helped to lead to a period of cloying conformity in the US auto industry. That, in turn, made it harder for Detroit to effectively respond to a rising tide of imports. George Romney was prescient in predicting this (go here).
Some historians blame the collapse of independents purely on the quality of management but I think that the reality is more complex. I get into this more here … and receive some strong pushback from some readers. Anti-trust policy is a sensitive topic in automotive circles.
Your comment regarding the dash to axle ratio of some EVs reminds me of a couple of things. Upon the first sight of a 1989 Eagle Premier. It seemed to me that the car had the longest front and rear overhangs that I have ever seen on a car. This trend continues to the current day, but it is much better disguised. I wonder if designers are reluctant to design cars that are simply functional like the Citroën Ami, lest the vast majority of undecideds find that too shocking. Today, the fear of being too far ahead of the curve is as great as it ever was. I’m sure a lot of early Kafer owners were ridiculed for a while in the early 1950’s…
Along that same line of thinking, I’m reminded of the the Horsey Horseless, an early car that had a wooden horse head and neck attached to the front of the car, so it would not spook other horses on the road. Maybe the elongated dash to axle ratio is the 21st century version of the Horsey?
The last good “brand manager” was Jim Wangers for Pontiac. David E. Davis at Campbell-Ewald was pretty good before him and before that, Volkswagen of America’s ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach !
How could Jim Wangers be a brand manager, since he was never responsible for a brand? An excellent adviser, consultant, idea guy, influencer, ambassador, etc. But he was never a manager and never had the responsibilities of one.
I don’t know enough about DED’s roles and activities at C-E to comment on how he shaped that brand, and would like to know more here.