Archive for the ‘Brands’ Category

As FIAT started to take over Chrysler, the executives assigned to the American company cast about for ways to reverse its declining sales. New products often help but, having just traveled through bankruptcy, they had nothing new to offer. But they could pretend to have something new by putting new labels on the old bottles. So, part way through the 2010 model year, for Dodge cars, minivans, and SUVs they abandoned boring trim names like SE and SXT in favor of more colorful ones like “Mainstreet” and “Uptown.” Apparently this little experiment didn’t work out. For the 2012 model year the funky trim names are gone. In their place? SE, SXT…the same ones they replaced.

Yes, some people are paid a good salary to come up with this stuff…

Buick has announced that they’re going to eliminate the CX, CXL, and CXS trim levels with their 2012 models. Instead, they’ll offer a hierarchy of option packages. Why? To eliminate the impression that the base model is the “cheap one,” which is unbefitting a premium brand. Which is why premium brands generally don’t have trim levels.

I’m all for this change, because the trim levels were meaningless and I could never keep straight whether the CXL or the CXS was the top model.

But it will only work if, as they imply, they boost base content so there truly is no “cheap one” suitable only for rental fleets and people who are really Chevrolet’s target.

Today Chrysler officially announced that they will be splitting the Ram pickup away from the Dodge brand, and making “Ram” a separate brand. Pickuptruck.com has posted 5 reasons why it’s wrong to divorce Ram trucks from the Dodge brand. And they’re good ones, chiefly that Ram truck owners think of their trucks as Dodges and are the brand most loyal customers. Continue this line of reasoning, and it becomes clear that, while a split might make sense, Chrysler’s execution is all wrong.

The facts, as Chrysler understands them: people strongly associate the Dodge brand with trucks, and as a result Dodge’s cars get overshadowed. Meanwhile, they want to move Dodge cars away from the current macho positioning and towards new lifestyles or whatnot.

So they don’t want the Dodge brand to mean anything that it currently means.

In this case, why not let Dodge be trucks, and resurrect Plymouth or Eagle for the cars? If they’re starting from scratch with the Dodge brand anyway, why not start with a new or mothballed brand? This way they’d only have to build one new brand–a task with a low probability of success in the best of conditions–not two. They could work with Dodge’s current image rather than fighting it.

There’s simply no need to get rid of the bird they have in their hand in order to go after a second in the bush. With their current plan they risk ending up with no brands that mean anything.

Now, Accent, Elantra, Sonata, and Azera are hardly stories names. But they are at least names. Word out of Geneva today via Autoblog is that Hyundai will be phasing them all out in favor of alphanumeric names. All of which will start with “i.” Why “i”? Apparently because it stands for Inspiration, Intelligence, Integrity, and Innovation.

And, I suspect, because of Apple’s success with the letter.

But then “iPod” and “iMac” are still names. “i30″? I don’t know what it is. Personally, I think “i” in an alphanumeric stands for Idiocy.

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I’ve attended two presentations by Ford today. The big news at Ford: they’re going to offer “more products people want.” I must wonder how long it took them to develop this strategy.

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