Isuzu’s Ads Are Hot but Its Sales Are Not

Joe Isuzu sells lies a lot better than he sells cars. Slightly more than a year ago, actor David Leisure first stood smiling in front of an Isuzu automobile and told TV viewers that they could buy it for $9. Although the character he portrays, Joe Isuzu, may have scored 100 on the laugh meter, on the most important meter of all--increased car sales--the needle didn’t budge.

In fact, it slipped backward. For the first six months of 1987, American Isuzu saw its U.S. automobile sales nudge slightly downward to 16,151 cars--about 50 fewer cars than it sold during the same period in 1986, according to Ward’s Automotive Reports. Although Isuzu spent a record $30 million on automobile advertising last year, it lost some ground in the auto sales column.

The company, however, did see a modest rise in the sale of light trucks.

One forecaster projects that Isuzu will face a 15% decline in passenger car sales this year--a bigger drop than he projected for its major competitors: Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

All are being hurt by the strong yen, which has forced those importers to increase car prices. Just last month Isuzu raised its car and truck prices an average 2.2%.

The Isuzu campaign is a classic case of a company wrestling with the tough question: What makes good advertising? If tickling the public’s fancy makes an ad a success, then Isuzu’s liar campaign is a grand champion. After all, who even heard of Isuzu just one year ago? Today, only 14 months after the liar campaign broke, just about everyone has. The campaign has been much mimicked, and it was ranked as the nation’s 10th most popular campaign last year by Video Storyboard Tests Inc., a New York market research firm.

But where has it gotten Isuzu? What does it matter if the public knows your name if it still isn’t buying your product? That is a question that Isuzu executives have pondered. And their answer is to change strategy. There will be a clear shift of emphasis in Isuzu’s fall ad campaign. The upcoming television ads will focus far more on the product and far less on the liar.

Industry analysts generally agree that it’s high time that Isuzu starts touting its products more--and its liar less. “The Isuzu ads are so entertaining,” said Mike Luckey, analyst at Shearson Lehman Bros., “that you sometimes forget what products they’re advertising.”

Although the liar campaign is clever, it is not something that will solve Isuzu’s biggest problem--its lack of an image, said Christopher Cedergren, senior auto analyst at J. D. Power & Associates, a Westlake Village marketing research firm. “An image is the most important thing in the car market,” Cedergren said. “Right now, Isuzu doesn’t have one.”

Some Isuzu dealers say that they, too, are ready for a change. “We get customers who come in here talking about him, and our salesmen sometimes joke that they’re his brother,” said Rudy Erm Jr., general manager at Circle Motors and Long Beach Isuzu. “But I haven’t seen any increase in business because of the ads.” In fact, since the campaign began, Isuzu sales at his dealership are down 20%, Erm said. His dealership also operates a Volkswagen showroom on the same site, and they sell just one Isuzu for every seven Volkswagens that roll out the door, he said.

Even the liar himself--in a moment of truth--agreed that the the public needs to learn more about Isuzu cars. “People I meet on the street tell me that they buy cars because of the commercials,” Leisure said in a telephone interview. “But maybe people love the commercials but don’t know much about the cars.”

Leisure’s job is hardly in jeopardy. In fact, the actor who has done for Isuzu what Clara “Where’s-the-Beef” Peller did for Wendy’s, has just signed a new, one-year contract with the company.

Leisure will still be artfully lying with the greatest of sleaze. But in two new ads scheduled to be filmed this month, the Isuzu cars--not Leisure--will be the heroes. The ads also will try to give identity to Isuzu’s individual products. “When the campaign first started, lying on TV was enough to get people’s attention,” said Dick Sitting, associate creative director at Della Femina, Travisano & Partners, the New York ad agency whose Los Angeles office created the campaign. “But now that people are used to the character telling lies, we have to do something more.”

This time around, the situations depicted in the commercials are giant hoaxes. But in order to draw more attention to the product, the ads will clearly show the cars’ special features. In one ad, scheduled to be filmed in the Mohave Desert this month, Leisure will attempt to prove that Isuzu’s high-performance car, the I-Mark, can travel faster than a speeding bullet. The car is featured prominently in the ad, and with Leisure at the wheel, it somehow manages to travel faster than a bullet that Leisure fires from a .357 magnum.

In yet another ad, Leisure also is at the wheel of Isuzu’s sport-utility vehicle, the Trooper II, which is sitting on a remote mountaintop. When a group of weary mountain climbers struggle to the top, they find Leisure grinning from ear to ear. “How’d you get up here?” one of the climbers asks him. Leisure responds: “In the amazing Trooper II. Of course, halfway up I did have to shift into four-wheel drive.”

In the ad industry, these are known as product-specific advertisements. The new batch of Isuzu ads are partly in response to Isuzu dealers who have asked for them, said John E. Reilly, senior vice president and general manager of American Isuzu. “Now that customers know who we are,” he said, “it’s time they know what we sell.”

While the first year of ads have built up tremendous familiarity with the Isuzu name, “it’s time to go beyond name recognition,” agrees Ted Sullivan, director of automotive consulting at Wharton Econometrics, a market research firm in Bala-Cynwyd, Pa. His firm is forecasting that Isuzu’s passenger car sales will slip to 32,000 in 1987 from a peak of 38,000 in 1986.

In the meantime, the 36-year-old Leisure is enjoying the fame and fortune that has resulted from the Joe Isuzu role. The Studio City resident recently completed his first feature film, “The Martini Project,” in which he stars as a corrupt advertising executive. It is scheduled to hit the theaters this fall. And he also co-stars with Sally Kellerman as a laughable spy in an upcoming NBC Movie of the Week, “If It’s Tuesday, It Still Must be Belgium.”

But it is the 10 ads that he has filmed for Isuzu that have best kept Leisure in the public’s mind--and heart.

“I’m learning to take it in stride,” he said. But sometimes the situations get out of hand. Recently, while driving his Trooper II on the highway--a sporty vehicle Isuzu provided for him--the driver in the car next to Leisure’s looked over at the actor and lost control of his vehicle, nearly hitting Leisure’s car. “I had my window rolled up,” Leisure said, “but I tried telling him to calm down.”

Then, there was Leisure’s recent trip to the automotive department at a Sears store. The salesman recognized Leisure and started suggesting design changes for Isuzu cars. “I had to tell him that I was just an actor and not Joe Isuzu,” Leisure said. “He was crushed.”