Mazda Hoping to Jump-Start Sales With Image Campaign
In its 27 years in the United States, Mazda has been the rotary engine car, the great little car, the Miata company and the company with a minivan.
But it has never progressed beyond 7th place--a distant 7th at that--in the race to win American car buyers’ hearts.
The problem?
In a cutthroat business in which a car maker’s message must rise above the competition’s, Mazda has failed to make itself heard by consumers, industry observers say.
“Our research shows that a lot of shoppers perceive that Mazda is disappearing,” says industry consultant George Peterson, president of Santa Ana-based AutoPacific Group. “They haven’t been consistent in their image, and people don’t know anymore what they stand for.”
While competitors Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. and American Honda Motor Co., both based in Torrance, have spent more than 30 years pounding home consistent messages--Toyotas are reliable quality cars and Hondas are simple quality cars--Mazda’s messages have been all over the board.
One year the importer’s cars “just feel right.” The next year it has “a passion for the road.” It has touted its engineering, handling and luxury in the past but for the last three years has concentrated on ads that focus on low-cost lease or purchase plans. Such advertising is considered the last resort for a struggling auto company.
When you are seventh in sales, “it is hard to get people to put you higher” in their consideration, concedes CEO Richard Beattie, the youthful Ford Motor Co. and Jaguar executive appointed seven months ago to take over and revitalize Mazda’s North American operations.
Beattie, 42, transferred from Ford-owned Jaguar to Mazda after Ford last year purchased controlling interest in an ailing Mazda Motor Corp. in Japan. A longtime ally of Mazda Motor President Henry Wallace, another Ford alumnus, Beattie is expected to get support from both Mazda and Ford.
He has already completed a massive corporate reorganization that puts all five of Mazda’s U.S. and Canadian companies under one command--Irvine-based Mazda North American Operations.
Now he says fixing the company’s image through advertising is a key strategy in his multi-pronged attack. And circumstances have given him an immediate opportunity to address the advertising message.
Foote, Cone & Belding, Mazda’s sole U.S. ad agency since the company began marketing cars in the U.S. in 1970, has had to resign the $240-million account. Its parent, True North Communications, merged with Chrysler Corp.’s ad agency this summer and Chrysler--a much bigger client--saw a potential conflict.
Mazda has asked three other agencies--Austin, Texas-based GSD&M;, Southfield, Mich.-based W.B. Doner and Ogilvy & Mather in Los Angeles--to pitch new campaigns. Beattie says he intends to pick the company’s new ad agency before the end of the year--in time to prepare a campaign for the redesigned 1998 Miata and to prepare additional corporate image ads that will probably build on two new spots just prepared by Foote, Cone as its final work for Mazda.
Though Mazda refused comment, industry sources say the agency pitches are scheduled for Oct. 17, two days before Beattie and a contingent of top Mazda North America executives plan to fly to Japan for the Tokyo Auto Show. Ogilvy in Los Angeles is thought to have an edge in the competition because of the work the agency’s Detroit office has done for Ford.
Mazda’s woes aren’t uncommon in the U.S. car industry. Nissan Motor Corp. USA--the No. 3 Asian car importer--has spent the last two years trying to rebuild its image with a costly $200-million “Enjoy the Ride” ad campaign that apparently has failed to sell cars. Its president, Robert Thomas, a strong believer in the ad campaign from TBWA Chiat/Day in Venice, resigned this week amid a 2.3% sales decline for the first nine months of this year.
But Mazda’s problems are more grievous. Sales plunged 36% from 1994 to 1996 and are off an additional 8.1% for the first nine months this year. So its struggle to recover will be a critical test of the power of image advertising.
The $50-million Foote, Cone ad campaign, intended to provide Mazda’s new agency with a jumping-off point, debuted Sunday with a 60-second television spot presenting Mazda’s cars as “not a car for everyone, just a car for everyone who loves cars.”
Over a montage of images of the company’s current lineup, the ad proclaims that a Mazda is “not like other cars.”
Mazda’s people “think different” and its cars “look different” and “drive different” from the competition’s because Mazda is “technical innovation, not technical imitation,” the ad says.
A second spot in the image campaign--slated to begin airing late this month--uses footage of the various vehicles Mazda has introduced in its nearly three decades in the U.S. The rotary-engine station wagon and RX-7 sports car, the Miata roadster, MPV minivan and the Millenia luxury sedan will be used to convey the message that Mazda has “more engineers than accountants,” isn’t afraid to take risks and doesn’t make boring cars.
Foote, Cone’s final campaign also includes product ads for Mazda’s B-series pickup truck, the MPV, the Millenia and the flagship 626 sedan--which is presented with the tag line “retooled, refined, reborn.” It is a tag Beattie hopes will stick to the company as well as the car.
The ads all play off Mazda’s strengths. While not high on the general consumer’s list, Mazda is known and appreciated by car buffs as the Japanese company with a European flair--a company whose cars have edgy styling and sporty handling.
The new campaign--and the search for a new agency to replace Foote, Cone--”comes at a critical time for us,” says Mazda marketing director Ronald Neale. “We haven’t worked with our brand” for several years, “and now we need to manage it. We want to create a differentiation between us and our competitors” in consumers’ minds.
That’s what Mazda’s ads in recent years have failed to do, says Chris Cedergren, managing director of Nextrend, a Thousand Oaks automotive industry consultant. It is a failure some in the industry would lay at Foote, Cone’s feet on the theory that an ad agency ought to be able to steer its client in the right direction.
But Beattie says that although the New York agency’s Orange County and Los Angeles offices might not have provided Mazda with the industry’s best creative work in recent years, the new campaign--created mainly in Foote, Cone’s San Francisco office--is just what he wants.
Some in the advertising and auto industries see Mazda’s problems as broader than poor public perception.
“They have bigger business issues to wrestle with,” suggests Robert Hilburn, executive vice president for strategic planning at Young & Rubicam Advertising’s Detroit office. “They have been chronically short of capital” and unable to turn out new or updated models as rapidly as the competition, he says.
In addition, as sales have fallen, many Mazda dealers have shifted their focus to other brands, leaving Mazda with below-average ratings in its own internal customer-satisfaction studies.
Beattie is well aware of the situation and has launched a three- to five-year campaign to remove the weakest of Mazda’s 860 U.S. dealers. That will leave the rest with bigger and potentially more profitable territories and give them more support in terms of new product, adequate supplies of parts and improved training than they’ve had from the company in years.
Mazda dealers, who heard the plan and saw the new ad campaign in a screening earlier this month, are enthusiastic.
“I’ve been pretty frustrated in the past, but once we get our identity back out there, we’re going to see more people in our showrooms,” says Phil Hahn, general manager of Beach Mazda in Huntington Beach--one of the first Mazda dealers in the country. “It won’t happen overnight, but I’ve talked to a lot of other dealers in the last year and its not frustrating anymore. We’re excited.”
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Looking for a Turnaround
Mazda North American Operations is seeking a new advertising agency to help restore its image and reverse a sales slide. A look at the Irvine-based company’s U.S. sales and market share:
Auto/Light Truck Sales
Nine-month period
*--*
Year Total U.S. sales Mazda sales Mazda % of market 1997 11,533,500 178,600 1.54% 1996 11,615,900 194,700 1.67
Year % chg. from year ago 1997 -7.8% 1996 NA
*--*
Year
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Year Total U.S. sales Mazda sales Mazda % of market 1996 15,140,200 238,300 1.57% 1995 14,765,900 283,700 1.92 1994 15,098,100 375,400 2.48 1993 13,918,100 344,600 2.47 1992 12,885,200 338,700 2.63
Year % chg. from year ago 1996 -18.2% 1995 -22.6 1994 +0.4 1993 -6.1 1992 NA
*--*
NA: Not available
Sources: Mazda, Automotive News Data Center, WEFA
