Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

You are more brave than me!

First, don’t do whatever didn't work in the past. You have the distinct advantage of seeing what failed and being able to avoid it, most of us just have to walk into our future fiascos blind.

You will need to address whatever was missing and holding you back in the past. I would start with revisiting how your product matches up with the demographic you are targeting. Do some basic research including consumer surveys. These will go a long way to helping you find the answers you will need to reposition your brand. There is no great mystery or breakthrough opportunity in selling cars, the basics keep on delivering, you just need to properly align your message with your audience.

Also, place a bit of focus on your viability and long term financial stability, but don’t mention the previous (potential?) bankruptcy. Just let everyone know you are strong and here to stay. No one wants to buy a car from a company that they think might not be around for very long.

Best of luck, Johnny B.
if you like the advice, read the blog: https://bit.ly/75KkSG

Dear terencel,

You might first want to ask why the brand is ailing?

What is it about the brand that's turned people off in the past?
Was it she sales pitch or the sales people, the service, the reliability, parts, warranties and so on?

Whatever that thing (or those things) is or are, fix them.
Because if it's any of those things and they're still as they were AFTER you've done your part, NO amount of rebranding will save things because it's vital to first get the product—and everything connected with it—right.

Again, great marketing will not save a crappy product, at least,
not in the long run. Sooner or later the shine of the marketing wears off and the dullness pops back through.

So first, fix those things and whatever else it was that led to the demise. THEN look at the cars.

The issue (my issue) with car marketing is that it all—ALL—looks the bloody same! Swooping car on wet road. Car at night reflected in windows of stores. Close up of front wheel as car takes tight corner on a mountain road. High shot from a helicopter of a car wooshing along a desert highway (professional driver, do not attempt!).

Dull. Bland, Predictable. INVISIBLE!

Whatever it is that car commercIals and press ads look like in whatever country you are in you must do the OPPOSITE. Screw tradition. To hell with convention. Death to dullness. Your ads must blow people's socks off. You marketing must DEMAND attention.

In short, your marketing must STOP TRAFFIC. Literally. You do NOT need a huge budget, all you need is one KICK ASS idea, an idea that can translate from print to web, from web to outdoor, and from outdoor the television and cinema screens. And this idea must be something that TELEGRAPHS something new, something that shakes the foundations of the norm.

Again, you don't need money to do this, you need to THINK and do everything within your power to REVERSE people's perceptions of what car marketing is all about: you've got to take the bar and not just reset it, but chuck it out of the window as if it were a stick so that the other dogs at the other agencies have GOT to go running after it.

Do this, pull it off and pull it off well and you'll break records
and create NEW memories, and thereby, you'll also create new perceptions. And it's upon these new memories that people will form their opinions.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @GaryBloomer

P.S. Here, you'll see ads by my friend and mentor, Neil French, ads that he wrote for XO Beer. Only the ads weren't SELLING beer, the point of the ads was to prove that newspaper advertising works. The ads for this non existent beer were SO effective, they had to start MAKING the beer. Here are the ads: https://parans.multiply.com/photos/album/20/Beer_ad_experiment