Missing the Point.

Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. That hand-wringing is a burgeoning cottage industry in the automobile business is really no surprise, especially if you’ve been reading my columns for any length of time. It has grown from being a minor irritant to becoming part and parcel of the decision-making process, as leaders who abhor leading defer to consensus group think at almost every opportunity.

But in the course of trying not to offend the hypersensitive sensibilities and touchy-feely hand-holding that have come to define the modern-day corporate environment, these so-called leaders who are running amuck by avoiding making the tough calls are doing a disservice to this business. And it’s becoming a huge issue that grows exponentially with each non-decision or wrongheaded consensus-building exercise that occurs in the name of “building great cars and trucks.”

This just in: Avoiding making decisions or deferring to group think in the belief that a shiny happy workplace is a better workplace has absolutely zero to do with building great cars and trucks. Instead it’s a recipe for developing vehicles with lowest-common-denominator mediocrity built in, and it’s rapidly becoming the bane of this business.

It’s bad enough when this rampant mediocrity injects itself into the process of designing, engineering and building automobiles, but it’s just as bad – and maybe even more dangerous - when it becomes part and parcel of the marketing and advertising process, as car company marketing executives careen around making wrong decisions or non-decisions at every turn, all in the name of doing “switched-on” marketing.

It’s everywhere too. Example No. 1? How can Cadillac and its ad agency Rogue come up with a simple and nicely-executed TV commercial for the new CTS called "Garages" and then at the same time run another spot called "Moon" that’s borderline crap-tastic and not befitting of the brand or the car?

I’ll tell you how. Too much hand-wringing and overthinking, combined with too much talking to themselves. Remember that it’s very easy for marketers to become enamored with the dulcet tones of their own voices, especially here in Detroit. And for Detroit-based car company marketers, talking to themselves wasn’t just a case of standard operating procedure in the bad old days, it became high art - right before they boarded the Oblivion Express, of course.

But Cadillac isn’t alone, no, not by any stretch of the imagination. Hand-wringing and poor decision-making run rampant throughout this business when it comes to marketing. Infiniti doing their best attempt at “smoke-and-mirrors” marketing when they simply don’t have the product is another example. Nissan’s luxury brand has allowed its brand positioning to get way ahead of itself, when it doesn’t have the product to back it up and isn’t likely to have anything of any consequence for two excruciatingly long years. That’s an eternity in this business, especially when you’re short of interesting product and a compelling reason for being.

Honda insisting that it has rediscovered its long-missing mojo, while consistently releasing mundane products to the public is disingenuous at best. And what Acura is doing in the name of reinventing itself borders on the ludicrous. How many times can they keep touting the 2015 NSX, when their alleged bread-and-butter products are uninspired and forgettable?

But nowhere is the relentless chaos that defines automotive marketing - which veers from inspired brilliance to abject mediocrity sometimes by the hour – more apparent than in the run-up to the Super Bowl.

Now, there are two schools of thought going on here, in case you’re wondering. One suggests that social media has changed the game completely and that for a company to spend $4 million for 30 seconds of airtime on the game and not promote the spot itself in the run-up, during and post game is a giant waste of money. This is by far the prevailing view of marketing executives these days and in all categories, too, especially when it comes to the auto companies.

Marketing executives can make that $4 million (exponentially more for long-form 60-second or 90-second spots) sound positively frugal by the time they throw in all the social media hits, bites and blips. (A $10 million bill for a 30-second Super Bowl commercial and the promotional activities surrounding it is fairly common.) The problem, of course, is that by the time they’re done pre-promoting the pre-promotions, any chance of real impact or audience “surprise” for the TV spot on the actual game itself is completely lost.

The other school of thought is that you do absolutely nothing before the spot itself airs. That means no leaks, no hints, no “pre” telegraphing of the message, no nothing. The prevailing view of today’s marketers – remember, they love to hear the sound of their own voices best – is very much against this notion.

Michael Sprague, Kia Motors’ EVP of marketing, was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying, “Waiting until Feb. 2 just doesn’t make sense. There are people out there who are looking for information about Super Bowl and if I can pique their interest now and feed them content over the next four weeks they will be more engaged with my brand over that time and then more engaged with my spot come Super Bowl Sunday.”

Remember what I said about marketing types talking to themselves? When was the last time Kia did anything more than what I define as “advertising cotton candy” on the Super Bowl? You know, the kind of ad that tastes good for a few seconds and then is instantly forgettable?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The marketers who buy into this latest trend are missing the point in a big way. Massaging the message through social media may feel good, but at the end of the game, which ads are the ones that stand out? The brilliant concept ads that were completely unexpected, or the ones that were beaten to death in the run-up to the game?

I come down hard on the side of door No. 1. As a matter of fact there is only one automotive marketer who understands this concept implicitly and delivers the goods more often than not when the situation demands it, particularly on the Super Bowl.

Only one.

Olivier Francois, Fiat-Chrysler’s marketing chief, understands ”big moment” advertising better than anyone in the business, and though I’ve had problems with his endless self-promotional tendencies, the guy not only gets it, he delivers.

The rest are simply missing the point before they even get started.

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.