by: Dick Stroud
In the UK, Honda has the reputation for being an oldies car – guess what car I drive!
It sounds like Toyota is worried that it might be heading in the same direction, according to this article in Newsweek that suggests the carmaker is desperately seeking Gen-Xers. Having just read the horrendous financial results from US car manufacturers I would have thought they would be happy with anybody with a checkbook and a positive account balance!
Toyota has retired Sly and the Family Stone from its ads for the Camry and replaced them with a modified version of Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" - nothing like thinking outside the box! The company has also established a youth-marketing staff made up entirely of people in the prized 24-to-35 age group. In the UK these would be considered geriatric marketers. All of this is intended to lower the average age of Toyota buyers by a decade, to 35.
The article suggests that Levi and Nike are also struggling to attract a younger audience and shake off an outdated image because:” It's a hard sell for boomer brands to persuade today's kids to drive the cars and walk in the same shoes that Mom and Dad did.”- "The days of boomers setting pop-culture trends are over," says the editor of Trends Journal. "Boomers are over the hill." Madison Avenue is now training its sights on the boomers' babies.
Maybe I have been missing something but this is re-writing of history. The reality is that advertising land has been obsessed with the Boomer’s kids and grandchildren for ages – to the exclusion of their parents. Still it made a good story.
Original Post: http://www.20plus30.com/blog/2008/07/toyota-is-fretting-about-becoming-honda.html
TALK ABOUT REINVENTING THE MAG WHEEL!
The car companies USED TO know all about this. You let the target market design your car.
Say, you're looking to boost your share of the under-25 market...go out and LOOK at what the opinion leaders (style leaders) do to their cars to please themselves and their friends.
Just as there are "IT clusters," "Biotech clusters," and "VC clusters," there are automotive innovation cluster (no abbrevation invented yet, how about "AI", no, that would be artificial intelligence).
Go to places were people innovate with their cars, look around, snap some pictures, write some things down.
Stop whining.
One more thing. They may have to look around a bit.
One of those hip urban free newspapers in Sweden sent a reporter out to find Stockholm's "Design District."
Turns out Stockholm's design district, according to this reporters research, is in Finland.
But, hey. They found it.
Yeah my parents are baby boomers and what they like is not in any longer. i understand whole-heartedly