Consistency and emotive advertisements are said to be key: Case being Honda

After having what has been said to be one of the best car advertisements of all time, Honda have now accepted that their recent advertisements have lost the “edge” and have become slightly “bland” in comparison to past advertisements.

Below this is both the award-winning cog advertisement and a more recent advertisement which Honda have now accepted as being too bland.

Honda’s 2003 cog advertisement is seen as creative high point.

Rosie Baker (2013), (author for Marketing Week) states how Honda has less than 5% of the UK market share and has now committed 50% of its marketing budget to ‘product led tactical advertising’ in previous years and have mainly targeted the mere 5% of people who are actively seeking to buy a car at any one time.

The marketing director of Honda has recently told Marketing Week that he aims to build on the personality of the brand and talk to the 95% of people who they don’t usually target as he says that it doesn’t matter whether they are looking to purchase a car or not, they can still have an opinion on the car brand and influence others that are looking to purchase. He continued by saying that the brand must take a more “conquest” oriented approach as he claims that the only way to drive volume growth in a declining market is by looking beyond existing loyal customers.

Honda has two product launches planned for this year and marketing campaigns for both are being developed as part of a more consistent brand strategy rather than ‘standalone activity.’ Honda also plans to improve on specific brand activity which is designed to build its personality. It will retain the “Honda. The power of dreams.” strapline it has used since 2002.

The Managing Director of Honda says that the marketing must focus on building an emotional connection with the brand. “I think emotional has got to be the first approach. People still have a great sense of pride in how they want something to make them feel and particularly when there is doom and gloom, that is important … you’re buying with an emotional response first and then you go on to do your research into the rational. The whole brand drip feed is slow over time, you can’t expect overnight sales success,” he says.

He mentions John Lewis advertisements and Volkswagen’s Darth Vader spot as examples of brand content that consumers seek out and anticipate because they have strong emotional resonance. As part of the brand building strategy he states that Honda is putting in place a European framework to ensure consistency across the region – “something that Honda has not had before,” he says.

 “If every country tries to create its own version of the brand you end up with a disparate set of values, each one is a slight variation. Now we can check it fits the overall brand DNA and that it has an incremental effect to helping consumers understand Honda.”

The brand currently works with Wieden + Kennedy, this is the agency that was responsible for its Cog, Choir and Impossible Dream advertisements.

Listed below are facts about Honda and the UK car market that has been sourced by SMMT and quoted from Marketing Week.

23% - Honda new car registrations increased 23 per cent year on year in the first three months of the year.

7.1% - Honda new registrations were up 7.1 per cent year on year in 2012 to 54,208 units.

5.9% - Total UK new car registrations increased 5.9 per cent in March 2013 to 394,806 units.

6.9% - In Jan - March registrations increased 6.9 per cent to 605,198 - the best since 2010 - but below the pre-recession 12.1 per cent.
 

Top 5 best-selling cars so far this year:

 1. Fiesta 34,309

2. Focus 25,081

 3. Corsa 24,561

 4. Astra 17,202

 5. Golf 15,726