Awake, and Driving

Brandweek, April 3, 2000 by Jeff Green

A lot of people said we were successful with 0 0 0 (a sales promotion--see Brandweek, July 19, 1999). We were. But it wasn't necessarily the offer, because only 15% of the consumers took it. But every dealer got behind it through their association and it generated tremendous traffic. It's critical to get the dealer buy-in in these events, otherwise it just becomes advertising and not event. What we're trying to do is take our retail advertising and turn it into events. It was a dealer idea. They're on the front line, they see it every day. They know what works. For us to say we have all the answers here in Cypress would be very misleading.

BW: Should we expect any major change in the look and feel of Mitsubishi?

PG: A year from now we will continue with the approach we have today. We will evolve; people are copying us, so we have to continue to evolve because we need to break through. We will continue to work at building our brand and putting a lot of emphasis on brandtailing, putting emphasis on both brand and retailing. We will focus on our core advertising areas. What you may see different, as we branch more into these special events, but we're just experimenting now. But the look and feel of Mitsubishi will be the same a year from now.

BW: Outside of automotive, who are your retail image models?

PG: We're the Gap of the car business. Gap is cool. People associate with that company. They have the greatest commercials. And everyone is copying them, too. Maybe Banana Republic. We like to think we're very spirited. We're really trying to associate ourselves with hip companies. We've said one thing, "We're not going to be everything to everybody." We're going to target certain demographics. Certain customers. Our target tends to be better-educated, higher income. It's those people who even though they have the two kids and they're soccer moms, they still want to feel alive.

BW: What marketing program outside of Mitsubishi do you consider particularly smart, a really great program to emulate?

PG: If I could think of another car company that has done a great job, it's Volkswagen. I think they've done a great job building their brand and I keep telling our they've made. Don't give me any excuses, it's possible.

The other thing we're looking at is e-commerce. We think there is a great future there. We've made it clear we're going to go with our dealers. We're not going to go direct. Whether a customer contacts us through the Web, we want them to have the exact same experience at the showroom floor. We want to give them that Mitsubishi look and feel. It has to be that same spirited experience they would get in any way they contact us. Six months ago when we were saying we won't sell direct, we'll work with our dealers and figure out a better mousetrap, a lot of people were saying we're crazy. But now all of a sudden we're seeing a lot of these dot.com companies coming our way and saying they'd like to partner with us. Again, we made some very strategic, fundamental decisions early on, on how we're going to be. We're not GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler; we can really go after a certain segment of the population.