At a recent New York City
Buick luncheon, we chatted with
Buick general manager Steve Shannon about his brand and where it's going. Shannon, like other GM executives, feel they are on the right track now with product--the
Lucerne,
LaCrosse, and the coming Enclave.
The thing
Buick is working on these days with its advertising, says Shannon, is "social acceptability." We all know that small town bankers and attorneys, realtors and insurance adjusters have long bought
Buicks. But the average age buyer for
Buick is around 68. Ouch. No wonder septuagenarian GM product boss Bob Lutz thinks GM is making progress with
Buick.
"We need to make
Buick more socially acceptable for buyers in their 40s and early 50s," says Shannon. There's that phrase again. It makes me think of the episode of Seinfeld in which George Costanza says..."You know...if it were socially acceptable, I'd drape myself in velvet." He later dates a woman who says "looks don't matter," so he, indeed, strolls into Monk's coffee shop wearing a velvet warm-up suit.
One tactic GM may want to try is putting a new ad agency on
Buick. McCann Erickson has worked on
Buick since Moses drove a Regal down from Mt. Sinai, and the results have been spotty in the best of times. Leave the bulk of the business at McCann, but bring in a truly creative, outside, resource to come up with a campaign for the Enclave launch. Modernista!, HUMMER’s agency, just picked up half the
Cadillac business. And New York's Deutsch is working on some Chevy business nowadays. Give Deutsch a crack at the Enclave. Or bring in a new agency all together. You can leave everything but the creation of national ads at McCann.
There are some positive signs at
Buick. The
Lucerne and
LaCrosse are pretty damn good
sedans. They are struggling to earn credibility and cachet. But some better overall creative communications around the brand will help.
We'd hate to see
Buick go the way of Olds
.—Jim Burt
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