In even the worst press kits, there’s a treasure house of data to be gained about the particular
vehicle in question as well as the company that builds it. Sometimes, press kits will say more coincidentally about the company than they ever intended. This is a case. The Durango’s all-new interior is a shock owners always deserved but never expected. This single sentence, a simple, harmless intro to the giant enhancements made to the Durango’s formerly sub-par interior, was discovered minding its own business on page 12 of Dodge’s 104-page novel that’s the 2011 Durango press kit. The writer’s intention, I might hope, was to suggest that patrons would be engulfed by the quality and value of the new Durango’s interior, it claims
more than that. Actually it just about sums up the previous couple of years of the Chrysler
corporation. I propose the following translation :
Look, we both know that Dodge interiors have been rubbish for years now, and we both know you, the shopper, merited better from a main line automaker. But we at Dodge / Chrysler declined to / could not give it to you, and you’ve been unsatisfied by us for such a long time that you don’t expect better anymore. Boy, will you be surprised when you
see the new Durango’s interior, as we ultimately got the memorandum on client satisfaction. It sounds ruthless, but the reality is colder and harder than a Caliber’s interior. There it is, in Dodge’s own press materials : a tacit admission the brand ( and company in total ) has been under-delivering for some time now. But there’s also hope when trying to finish. Because let’s be honest, it worked nicely for Dominoes. As you will have heard, the famous pizza
provider lately launched a new, self-degrading press campaign calling out its poor-quality pizza and
promising the shopper that they might get the better-tasting pizza they deserved from here on out. Sound
familiar? Dodge, Dominoes, they even sound similar. Makes you wonder if they employed the same PR expert. even though it was unintentional, could you blame Dodge for trying? In fact , Dominoes sales peaked after the new pizza and accompanying advert campaign launched. We, as customers, are fed so much marketing foolishness in advertising these days that it’s essentially refreshing to hear a major co. admit their mistakes and speak simply about the reality of their products. Many food critics opined that the new Dominoes pizza was only slightly better than the old stuff, nevertheless it did not hurt sales. The humiliated ad verts and promises of redemption made an impression on clients.
of course, it’s a very , very enormous leap from a $10 pizza to a $30,000 SUV. Vehicles are the second biggest single-item get a person or family makes after a home, and in this turbulent economic environment, nobody wants to spend needlessly on a bad product. With so much money at stake, will theyactually be ready to risk it on company that hasn’t posted a nice profit in years and needed to be bailed out by the U.S. Executive twice? Nobody knows, but Dodge actually doesn’t have a choice here. Anybody who’s so much as seen footage of the old Durango’s interior and the new one will have an opinion on the changes especialy Toyota Service Mckinney. A lot of them will not think highly of the old interior, and Dodge can’t hold it against them as it was truly bad. Whether the folks at Chrysler like it or not, comparisons will be drawn between their old products and new, and they will not be kind to the old.
That leaves Chrysler with two options : pretend like the old product doesn’t exist, or embrace it. Detroit’s no stranger to the head-in-the-sand approach, but the new bosses seem to have woken their firms up to the undeniable fact that it wasn’t working. When it comes to cars, especially bad ones, consumers have a particularly long memory. They don’t forget just because the automaker doesn’t rap about it. And if you’re Dodge, what have you got to lose? Anyone turned off by this approach likely wasn’t going to purchase a new Dodge anyhow. Fact is, the new products are substantially better than the old ones, and the folks behind them really believe strongly in them. The Durango’s fraternal twin, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, saw a big jump in sales and for good cause : it’s massively better than the old one for Episcopal School of Dallas. No one enjoys swallowing their pride,
but it is regularly strong medication. In the final analysis, the self-defacing advert campaign only works if the fresh product is essentially good, and in this example it is. Now,
Dodge and their Chrysler overlords just have to keep it up.
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Posted by blogging
Apr 25, 2012