Awake, and Driving

Brandweek, April 3, 2000 by Jeff Green

We'd launch the product and then kind of let them sit on dealer lots and then we'd launch something else and then we'd launch something else and then we'd try to figure out what our competitors were doing. So we made a real change there, a very big change. We're really trying to be a Mitsubishi company, leveraging that great name, and then making the product very important but making sure that every one of our products has that common look.

BW: What about your marketing mix? You've pretty much stuck with the traditional mass market approach and don't do much targeted, events-type activity.

PG: If anything, we were probably too fragmented three years ago when I came on board. We were trying to do all of those things, but we weren't getting at the core. You have to have your core advertising before you can start fragmenting yourself to some of the other areas. So yes, our goal is to get into some of those areas (more Internet, sponsorships, more consumer print), absolutely. We were the first to auction a car on e-Bay, but somehow BMW got all the attention.

My philosophy is if you can't own the event, don't do it. For example, car racing is very, very difficult for us to break through. So we're looking at some of the emerging areas, like--I don't want to use the word extreme sports, but more snowboarding, surfing, skateboarding, that whole movement across the U.S. We're experimenting in that area right now.

We're also looking at rally racing because we're very big in that worldwide. But that's not a big sport in the U.S. right now. We're trying to gauge if we can leverage that. We're going to get involved a little bit in the Baja rally this year. Again these are all tests right now. Our goal is to hit one of these areas that we think we can own and then we'll go forward. We don't want to be fragmented and be a little bit to everybody. We want to get behind something that, when people think of that particular sport or event, they think of us. It's tough to break into those areas.

BW: While other companies are trying to consolidate dealer marketing efforts, you have been expanding the number of dealer marketing associations. Is this a trend that will continue?

PG: It's not just driven by Mitsubishi folks. Absolutely yes, we will continue. Our dealers are part of the process. (Central to the plan) is our retail marketing council that's made up of two dealers from each region, for a total of l0, and our executives.

We sit down with the dealers and plan out not only our advertising strategy but also some of the incentives/event strategies that we want to go forward with. Then we work with Deutsch to develop concepts. It's a joint decision-making process between our dealers and us. I don't think we'll ever get to the point where they'll be happy with only one execution. They want to have choices. We feel the same way. I see this continuing. It's a little more expensive, but once you go through the execution phase, it's a lot more effective because you get everybody on board.