Suzuki Starts Ad Blitz to Counter Blast at Samurai
Hoping to counter a wave of negative publicity following reports of serious safety problems with the popular Suzuki Samurai, Suzuki began a week-long nationwide advertising blitz Thursday night, the company said Friday.
The U.S. sales arm of the Japanese auto maker began to buy advertising time on network news programs and on local television news shows across the country beginning Thursday, airing ads that quote from positive reviews of the Samurai in auto industry trade magazines.
“We’ve been purchasing as much time as we can since yesterday,” said a company spokeswoman Friday.
The ad blitz began just after Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, said Thursday that it believes the Samurai is so unsafe that all 150,000 now in use in the United States should be recalled and kept off the road, and the purchase price refunded to their owners.
“When something like this gets said about you in the press, you don’t get equal time to respond. But you have to respond somehow,” said Leonard Pearlstein, president and chief executive of Suzuki’s Los Angeles-based ad firm, Keye/Donna/Pearlstein.
Suzuki has also changed the tone of its advertising because of the safety charges.
The company spokeswoman said Suzuki has pulled another television ad that featured young Samurai enthusiasts singing the rock song “Born to be Wild.” Consumers Union officials had criticized the ad, because they felt it was promoting reckless driving by young Samurai buyers who might then be victims in rollover accidents.
The day after the Consumers Union press conference, the impact on Suzuki sales was difficult to gauge. Suzuki dealers conceded that owners and other consumers were calling in with questions about the safety issue, but several said they believe it is too early to tell whether sales will be seriously hurt.
“The publicity from this is not good for sales, that is obvious,” said Peter White, general manager of Prince Suzuki in Hawthorne. “I’ve had people ringing up, asking about the recall program. There is no recall program. . . . But sales are still very good. They’ve been selling really well.”
Meanwhile, Suzuki was hit Friday with a class-action lawsuit seeking to force the Japanese carmaker to refund to owners the price of its Samurai utility vehicle, which has been accused of being unsafe. The suit, filed against Suzuki’s U.S. sales subisidiary in Brea, was filed in Cook County circuit court in Chicago.
