The Hummer Campaign: An Overview

OVERVIEW When full general Motors Corporation (GM) acquired the commercial merchandise rights to the smoking truck, the civilian version of the U. S. Armys Humvee, it face up the challenge of promoting a fomite that was neer int finised to be interchange in postgraduate numbers. Part of the termination was to design smaller, particular-expensive versions, the H2 and H3, nevertheless oft of the succeeder would have to depend on the trade. kind of than turning to a roster of ad growncies it usually worked with, GM hired a unexampled capital of Massach substance abusetts creative boutique, Modernista , in 2000. The initial mark of the $35 billion operate, begun in lordly 2001, was to establish dope as a extravagance brand.Thus, insures of stiff-splattered bullet trains that compete up the fomites off-road capabilities were scrapped in favor of shots that made it seem jewel-like. in one case the brand was repositioned, the marketers goal was to pitch the lower- priced H2 and H3 to a wider market, hopefully to more wo workforce. Factors such as rising muff prices and the perception that the skunk was oversized for close consumers proved to be major hurdles for the marketers. However, by the end of 2003 the campaign had succeeded in redefining the gage brand, and with the ingress of the H3 in 2005, the marketers took on a bracing-made challenge handleing the skunk to a stilt market.HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Humvee was knowing for the U. S. Army in 1979 by AM General Corp. , found in southeastward Bend, Indiana. The 3. 5-ton vehicle became a star of the 1991 Iranian Gulf War, spurring consumer demand for a civilian version, which was introduced in 1992 as the smoking. It catered to an exclusive market, as demonstrated by the de bathroom that Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the first buyers. The vehicle never received much advertizing keep going off AM General spent less than $1 million on marketing the bullet train in 1999, w hen it sold most 700 of the trucks.Nevertheless, AM General did enough stemma to attract the attention of General Motors, and in the end bought the bullet brand in late 1999. GM signed a seven-year contract with AM General to ready the future(a) generation, GM-designed version, the weed H2 sport-utility vehicle (SUV). The authorisation Modernista was hired to promote the brand. Prior marketing sweats had played up the military nexus and the pots off-road capabilities, billing the vehicle as the worlds most serious 44. Modernista won the news report because it was the totally agency that attempted to mode a wider appeal by passage beyond the tough-guy, army-truck image.The principals involved in the campaign did non lack experience in selling cars. Modernista s cofounder, Lance Jensen, had worked with dopes advertising director, Liz Vanzura, when she was at Volkswagen of the States and he was with the Boston-based ad agency Arnold Communications. twain played key ro les in growing Volkswagens award-winning Drivers Wanted campaign. Vanzura commented that, part the Volkswagen ads were aimed at cool, young people, her new mission was to sell Hummers to cool, rich people. TARGET market Even before hiring Modernista , GM had make a great deal of market seek.According to Ted Evanoff, writing for the Indianapolis Star, In 1999 researchers stumbled across the nonion that an unlikely crosswise of Americasurgeons, dot-com millionaires, rock stars, high school students, corporate execsprized their individuality. And they regarded the rugged Hummer as a symbol of individuality, oddly compared with the typical sport-utility common in suburbia. Modernista was attached 2,200 pages of market data to distill into an advertising pass. The agency was excessively handed a brand that skewed very much toward males, averaging 50 years in age and with an annual household income of more than $200,000.The home run buyer for the less-expensive H2, while st ill male, was 42 years old on medium and had a household income above $125,000. Vanzura told Chris Reidy of the Boston Globe that the coveted audience include rugged individualists, adventurous entrepreneurs, and adrenaline junkies. In other interviews she descri just nowtocks the target market as successful achievers and style leaders. She in like manner told Evanoff that Hummer had to vie with other purchases the well-heeled might consider, such as yachts or spend houses, stating, Were really not competing in an automotive category. COMPETITION The yacht, vacation house, and other status symbols notwithstanding, Hummer competed in the luxury-SUV category against other SUVs, including the Lincoln Navigator, grease Rovers Range Rover, and the Lexus LX 470. save Hummers old geezer opponent was DaimlerChryslers jeep Wrangler. exaggerate similar military roots except retaining back to ground War II, landrover had defined the SUV category and at its line of pineitude in 1993 controlled nearly 30 percent of the traditional SUV market.Over the following several(prenominal) years, however, the brand failed had to introduce new postures, and its lessexpensive ones faced increasingly stiff competition, resulting in a severe erosion of sales. As long as Hummer was not a direct competitor, DaimlerChrysler took little notice of it, precisely as soon as GM acquired the right to mass-market the Hummer, DaimlerChrysler recognized the threat at the high end of the SUV category and became obstinate to hold on to Jeeps reputation as the premier heavy-duty, off-road brand. The dickens vehicles had slightly different target markets, however.Jeep appealed to consumers who loved the outdoors and might obey one of the dozens of Jeep laugher off-road events held by dint ofout the year. Typical Hummer customers, on the other hand, wanted the off-road capabilities the vehicle had to flip but were more interested in the image it bring roughlyd. They were as likely to chock up their Hummers to an upscale mall as up a mountain. MARKETING STRATEGY In preparation for marketing the lower-priced H2, Modernista instituted a distich campaign, paid for by AM General, to sell the H1 while repositioning the brand.As allow for Uronis, an associate creative director at Modernista , explained to the Boston Herald s Greg Gatlin, Hollywood had defined what Hummers stood forwar, explosions and arrogance . . . We just took a come along at some other scene of the truck. Jensen added, We went out and talked to guys that drove them . . . they dont all hunt and kill things. Nevertheless, Hollywood movies had done a good lineage of making consumers aware of the Hummer. Market research conducted in 1999 indicated that as many as one in five buyers of large SUVs considered purchasing the Hummer.The bridge campaign was mean to play to the rugged individualists who, research revealed, were attracted to the Hummer and to set the stage for the launch o f theH2 by creating an emotional attachment to the brand that transcended the hard-edged image fostered by Hollywood. According to Evanoff, writing in the Indianapolis Star, the promotion of the H1 was think to create a halo over the brand, providing the cornerstone for a brand image that go away carry the smaller H2. The first subject ads for the GM-owned Hummer began appearing on August 13, 2001.It was an all-print campaign that featured photographs of the vehicle in lush locales in Chile. Not only did the pictures suggest whither the H1, with its off-road prowess, could take the viewer, but they also made the freehand truck look small. It was the first time Hummer was not portrayed covered in mud or linked to the military. Reinforcing the visual message of the ad was the textbook, which included the headline How did my person get way out here? and the concluding text Sometimes you bewilder yourself in the middle of nowhere.And sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find yourself. The fabled H1. Hummers longtime tagline, Worlds most serious 44, was replaced by standardised nothing else. The cardinal ads ran through the rest of 2001, appearing in such publications as the Wall route Journal, Barrons, Esquire, Spin, Wired, and Red Herring. Hummers 50 dealers were also encouraged to use the ads created by Modernista to bring continuity to the brands makeover, with some of their media costs being reimbursed by a cooperative advertising program.The H2, based on GMs Chevrolet Tahoe life-size SUV, was introduced in July 2002. A second model featuring a small pickup bed and a cargo door was sibyllic to be offered at the same time, but the launch was pushed back, partly because the vehicle postulate more work but also as a way to extend the marketing buzz the brand was creating. The new H2, with a base price of $48,000, was approximately half the price of the H1 and, despite being called the baby Hummer, essentially the same size.But it featured a s maller, less clanking gas engine rather than a cumbersome diesel one, and it had comforts and customizable options the H1 lacked but that were expected in a luxury SUV. The introduction of the H2 was supported by another print campaign developed by Modernista While the Like nothing else tagline of the prior ads was retained, the look of the new ads was markedly different, relying on dramatic close-ups set against bold, sky-blue backgrounds. Like the first ads, the new ones ran in a wide range of magazines, with the text accommodate to the publication.For example, in the Robb Report, which covered all things luxurious, the text read, Excessive. In a Rome at the height of its power sort of way. The toilet table Fair text read, Threaten the men in your office in a whole new way, part of an effort to increase the number of women buying the vehicles. another(prenominal) ad proclaimed, Perfect for rugby moms. somewhat 10 percent of H1 owners were women, and one goal of the H2 campa ign was to increase that number to 25 percent. Outdoor ads were also produced, running in 14 major markets, including late York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit. affect and outdoor ads were made available for the use of dealers. The first Hummer television ads airy in mid-August 2002. The initial three 30-second spots, intended to romanticize the truck, were shot in Iceland and in Vancouver, British Columbia, and featured both natural and urban locations. They showed friends in a Hummer speeding over the tundra of Iceland or a professional woman weaving through traffic in a city. constitute to rock music, the only words in the spots were text statements such as Maybe if you understructure, you will. A second human body of the television campaign played on peoples perception of the Hummer as a gas-guzzling road hog. In one spot a young boy constructed a small woody version of the Hummer to enter in a soapbox derby, while The Whos Happy Jack played in the background and the little girl next door looked on. At the start of the big race the other boys scoffed at little Jack and his less-than-streamlined racer, but he prevailed by abandoning the asphalt course, breaking the rules to go cross-country and win the race and the girl.Through the modality of the spot Jack was portrayed not as a blatant practical joker but as a noble-minded iconoclast, offering subliminal reassurance to potential Hummer customers who might feel guilty astir(predicate) buying a vehicle that got about 13 miles to a gallon of gas on the highway. A second Hummer spot, also displaying a tough side, hearkened back to the Asteroids video game of the 1980s, with a spaceship blasting boulders only to confront an indestructible Hummer, which chased the ship off the screen. payoff GM and Modernista ucceeded in introducing Hummer to a wider market, but after a severe showing in 2003, sales began to tail off, partly because of high gas prices. To heal lost ground, in 2004 GM introdu ced the H2 SUT (sport-utility truck). This was followed by the unveiling in 2005 of the H3, a midsize Hummer priced from $29,500 to $32,000. Almost 17 inches shorter, 1,700 pounds lighter, and more fuel-efficient at 20 miles per gallon, it was a vehicle GM hoped women and younger drivers would find more appealing. In pitching the vehicle to a mass market, Hummer and Modernista aced a new task. putting a positive spin on the challenge, Jensen told Jeremy W. Peters of the New York Times, The brand has a bay window of different personality levels . . . You can do the serious capability stuff, the real scramble rock climbing stuff, the peaceful back-to-nature stuff. perseverance analyst Mary Ann Keller disagreed, telling the New York Times that it was impossible to sell Hummer to the masses How in the world can you possibly fathom that something that looks like a military vehicle is practical for the mediocre driver?