Bad advertising? No advertising? No problem.
June 30, 2015
By Gonzalo López Martí LMMIAMI.COM
- I was watching the award-winners at the Cannes Festival last week.
- Sifting through the usual parade of bogus entries one thing piqued my attention.
- Honda (the car maker) steadily creates beautiful campaigns in the UK.
- Over there, it seems, they are trying to “build the brand”.
- Here in America, not so much.
- Why?
- I’ll tell you why: Honda does NOT need advertising in America.
- The product itself is so good, reliable and sturdy that they can just mail their campaigns in.
- Do any of you colleagues know what their ad budget is here in the US of A?
- I did some perfunctory research online and couldn’t find any reliable figures but I’m sure as hell it is one of the lowest among its competitors.
- The quality of the product speaks for itself.
- Its reputation precedes it.
- Safety, reliability, sturdiness, efficiency.
- No need to broadcast it.
- Word of mouth is ‘nuff.
- Who needs marketing execs when you employ the best engineers and industrial designers in the world?
- Honda could do away with their marketing communications department altogether and nobody would notice.
- D’you know which are the most sought-after vehicles by carjackers?
- The Accord and the Civic.
- In that order.
- The reason: they fetch the best prices at chop shops.
- I kid you not.
- Yup.
- You would’ve thought Merc or Beamer, right?
- Nope.
- The Honda Accord and the Civic are the most stolen cars in America.
- They have been for decades.
- Not sure it’d be the best tagline ever for a carmaker.
- Or the worst.
- Hondas stay on the road for so long that there’s vibrant demand for parts from & for decades-old models.
- Not unlike Rolex watches, the aftermarket for Honda parts –legit or otherwise- is plenty profitable.
- Now that’s what I call quality.
- It is reassuring AND unsettling to drive the car preferred by thieves.
- Still it beats driving a muscle car or a German import which, like any marketer knows, are the choice of males with small genitals.
- Have you ever negotiated with a Honda salesman?
- I have.
- Repeatedly.
- I might be a bit of a masochist cuz I keep doing it again and again.
- My advice: don’t even bother bargaining.
- They have the upper hand and they know it.
- They have the attitude of a French nightclub bouncer (only with a few more pounds around the waist and an ill-fitting off-the-rack suit).
- They are not hostile, no no no, they are just mildly annoyed and utterly uninterested in anything you might say.
- Just pay up and drive away.
- Mechanics love Hondas because their inner workings are simple, intuitive, way easier to repair than other makes.
- Unlike Jaguar, for example.
- Real design, folks, is usually found under the hood.
- Then again, I’m not saying Honda ads in America are wrong or bad.
- They are, for lack of a better word, bland.
- An afterthought.
- A footnote.
- As I said above, they are mailing them in.
- They don’t seem to really care about the ad thingy.
- In some cases, their ads are so loopy and esoteric that they delight award show juries.
- Is it a carefully calculated marketing ploy to fool us?
- Some sort of planned negligence?
- Affected nonchalance?
- Sprezzatura?
- Don’t know what sprezzatura means?
- Google it.
- Honda never appeals to the usual advertising tricks: attempting to question the consumer’s self-esteem or social standing.
- Buy this product and you’ll be more sexually attractive, manly, successful, adventuresome and so on and so forth.
- Their cars seamlessly skew the usual design tics and cosmetic gimmicks of most other brands.
- No flash.
- Form following function.
- Frugal but never cheap.
- Honda makes cars, light trucks, motorcycles, aircrafts, nautical engines, power generators, lawn mowers, robots that act as household servants.
- Motorsports?
- Don’t get me started.
- Since the 60s they’ve been supplying engines and all sorts of state-of-the-art technology to dozens of Formula 1, IndyCar and MotoGP racing teams, just to name a few.
- Bastards look eye to eye with Ferrari.
- And you thought it was not really a cool, let alone glamourous, brand.
- Honda was Apple before Apple existed.
- Want a secure bet to park some savings for a long smooth ride?
- Buy HMC (NYSE) &/or 7267 (Tokyo Stock Exchange)