Toyota is synonymous for quality.
Management concepts like “Just in Time”, quality management concepts like “Total
Quality management”, materialized with the evolution of the Toyota production
system. Any industry, any company considers Toyota to be the ultimate benchmark
for quality. The case study of how Toyota became one of the bestselling
vehicles despite its European and American rivals.
I was surprised to see the recent
advertisements of Toyota Camry, positioning Camry as a bold choice. When
positioning a brand a company attempts to send stimuli to the human brain to
create a perception about the brand. Either I do not know the meaning of the
world or I really don’t understand which part of driving a Camry is the BOLD
CHOICE???
The Real Bold Choice
For me a bold choice would be, go
sky diving, around the globe in an air balloon as the greatest entrepreneur Richard
Branson once did. Or in the vehicle
space driving the world’s fastest car or f1 formula racing is a bold choice
because bold choices comes with the “RISK” component attached to it.
As per research figures from
motorintelligence.com from 2014 to 2015 April, the sales have dropped by 10.4%.
Considering the maturity level of Toyota the most respected vehicle manufacturing
company surprised to witness such a blunder.
In one of their advertisements a
family Mom, Dad and the son goes to a Toyota agent to purchase a Camry. This is
a terrible analysis of their target market and positioning. When you have a
kids, you don’t go for bold choices, you go for safe options, and you go for
options with convenience.
Positioning Blunder
Surprisingly, although in their
advertisements they go on to speak about Camry being the bold choice. But not a
single product attribute is discussed on any of the advertisements. I
personally think this is a serious positioning blunder from Toyota. Camry is
the family vehicle, just look at the profiles of customers who has bought a
Camry, you don’t want to mess up a brand which is already doing well.
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