RE: Marketing matters: PH Blog

RE: Marketing matters: PH Blog

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Discussion

r11co

Original Poster:

6,244 posts

229 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
RacerMike said:
Trust me when I say this. I work as an attribute engineer for a car company.
Why am I inclined to distrust you with a job title like that and an admitted vested interest? scratchchin

Pardon me for being cynical, but if any company can create the impression that they have engineered an improvement into something simply by sticking a better brand name on it then that is worth a lot more to them than actually doing it. We are both talking about bottom lines here after all.

It is very difficult to find test cases for this though, so the doubt can remain. The only example I can think of was the 4th generation Ford Fiesta and the Mazda 121 of the same era. Exactly the same car bar the badges, the front grille and some plastic trim on the tailgate, yet the 121 had a higher list price due to the perceived quality of Japanese cars - despite them rolling off the same production line in Spain. Manufacturers will do it if they can get away with it, and no-one will argue either!

ghibbett

1,900 posts

184 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
r11co said:
RacerMike said:
Trust me when I say this. I work as an attribute engineer for a car company.
Why am I inclined to distrust you with a job title like that and an admitted vested interest? scratchchin
If you know what an Attribute Engineer does, then you'll know he (or she) is better placed to judge the nuances of 'similar' vehicles than not just Joe Public, but the majority of the Motoring Press.

r11co

Original Poster:

6,244 posts

229 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
ghibbett said:
If you know what an Attribute Engineer does, then you'll know he (or she) is better placed to judge the nuances of 'similar' vehicles than not just Joe Public, but the majority of the Motoring Press.
Weasel words! I have no idea exactly what an attribute engineer does (although I could probably take an educated guess), so unless you tell us you are just being smarmy.

Again, pardon the distrust but this sounds like exactly the sort of waffle and puff designed to disguise a lack of substance. You're telling me I just don't 'get it', and neither does everyone else for that matter.

The ones that do 'get it' are rewarded with a lighter wallet and a feeling of being part of the club, although no-one ever gets told exactly what being in the club really entails (because that would give the game away).

The more I think about it the more the article reads as a propaganda piece for exactly the above viewpoint, only with an attempt to argue it rationally.

Edited by r11co on Monday 1st September 17:18

errek72

943 posts

245 months

Monday 1st September 2014
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I'd actually pay extra not to have to be seen in a tarted-up Golf.
Turns out I don't have to as the Leon, but more interestingly, the Megane RS exists.


r11co said:
ghibbett said:
If you know what an Attribute Engineer does, then you'll know he (or she) is better placed to judge the nuances of 'similar' vehicles than not just Joe Public, but the majority of the Motoring Press.
Weasel words! I have no idea exactly what an attribute engineer does (although I could probably take an educated guess), so unless you tell us you are just being smarmy.
Edited by r11co on Monday 1st September 17:18
Rather a well-made point.

ghibbett

1,900 posts

184 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
An Attribute Engineer is someone who is trained to evaluate and quantify vehicle attributes, for example steering feel, seat comfort, or throttle response. The attributes of the vehicle that are subjective and cannot be defined by numbers but by comparison and experience.

The reason I say they're good judges of vehicles is that 1, it's their job and 2, they have massive exposure to varying vehicles day-in, day-out. They'll be part of a department of such Engineers that can, in theory, give a good cross-section of views.

However I'll wait until RacerMike comes back to correct any mistakes I've made in the above.

HTH.

plfrench

2,297 posts

267 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
Turbobanana said:
Does anybody REALLY care about the marketing?

Don't we just buy what we like? (And no, I am not wearing a Tesco suit or leatherette shoes etc).
How do you think a company makes a product that customers will like? It is the marketing department of any major and sucessful business in any sector that will drive product development. The understanding of what drives customer choice is critical to developing product solutions that will sell. These criteria are then passed on to the technical or engineering teams to develop and deliver against.

Amazing the number of people who use marketing as a derogatory term despite the fact that they all buy solutions defined by a marketing department somewhere!

r11co

Original Poster:

6,244 posts

229 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
ghibbett said:
An Attribute Engineer is someone who is trained to evaluate and quantify vehicle attributes, for example steering feel, seat comfort, or throttle response. The attributes of the vehicle that are subjective and cannot be defined by numbers but by comparison and experience.
Sounds like the job description of a car reviewer to me. confused

Seems the only reason for the fancy job title is to indicate which side of the fence you are on [cynic]although your wages probably come from the same pot[/cynic].

plfrench said:
Amazing the number of people who use marketing as a derogatory term despite the fact that they all buy solutions defined by a marketing department somewhere!
Really? Are you suggesting that every product started with a marketing exercise? I thought Douglas Adams was being satirical when he came up with the character of the Golgafrinchan marketing girl.

Edited by r11co on Monday 1st September 19:38

ghibbett

1,900 posts

184 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
Yep, car reviewer would be a reasonable layman's description. It doesn't matter which OEM pays them, they're there to benchmark with impartiality, or at least the good ones are! However where they differ from a 'car reviewer' / journalist etc is that they have an Engineering background, thus enabling them to understand why, for example, the car has a certain self-centering force to the steering and then be able to recommend geometry changes to improve the setup.

TBH, I'd love a job like that!

plfrench

2,297 posts

267 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
r11co said:
Really? Are you suggesting that every product started with a marketing exercise? I thought Douglas Adams was being satirical when he came up with the character of the Golgafrinchan marketing girl.

Edited by r11co on Monday 1st September 19:38
Not necessarily that every product was concieved from marketing, some will be technology pushes, but they will certainly have been approved for production by the marketing department.

Ironically, the solutions people like the most will be as a result of a great marketing approach. The whole idea is to match a solution to people's wants and needs (including those of PH'ers) - do this right, and your target audience will buy. The point is, however, that the target audience for different brands will be different, otherwise there would not be enough market to go around. Therefore the combinations of performances offered will vary - some will appeal to a particular individual, some will not.


anonymous-user

53 months

Monday 1st September 2014
quotequote all
Maldini35 said:
FWDRacer said:
yonex said:
VW or Seat kudos....

rofl
Pull 'em apart and they contain 70-80% the same part numbers. Who's rolling on the floor. The VW Marketing department. P*ssing themselves. The reason the that Ahem, Premium car showrooms have such large windows is so they can see people coming hehe
Human DNA is 97% the same as a chimpanze but I'm not convinced I'd want to date one.

I bet that a quick look in your fridge, under your kitchen sink, in bathroom cabinet would probably reveal a host of brand leading products. Colgate? Cif? Kellogs Cornflakes? Stella? All brand leaders charging a premium.
None of us are immune.
You know what, you're wrong. I woke up to the mega brand rip off a while back and tried the generic vs premium. Some things are worth paying for, a VW over a Seat IMO is not. Genius bit or marketing though, got to hand it to them making fall over themselves to convince people that the same product is worth paying more...or less, for.



nickfrog

20,872 posts

216 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
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I agree, gob smacked people still buy cars for class/image reasons. It was kind of a lower middle class thing in the 80's but now ? Still, each to their own.

But at least those people don't seem to post on car enthusiast websites. Hold on...

On a serious note, if the Seat's residuals are so much poorer it will make a bargain in 2/3 years time.

But the difference in % doesn't seem that huge in fact, a few % points in reality.

I still don't understand how a new Golf GTI is still more expensive than a new M135i after discount and after spec is equalised but we have to thank the BMW's designer for that I guess !


RacerMike

4,192 posts

210 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
quotequote all
ghibbett said:
Yep, car reviewer would be a reasonable layman's description. It doesn't matter which OEM pays them, they're there to benchmark with impartiality, or at least the good ones are! However where they differ from a 'car reviewer' / journalist etc is that they have an Engineering background, thus enabling them to understand why, for example, the car has a certain self-centering force to the steering and then be able to recommend geometry changes to improve the setup.

TBH, I'd love a job like that!
You've pretty much described it correctly. A car reviewer is paid to read the media pack and report entirely subjective information on a car. An attribute engineer is there to take what is designed and then tune it to a level defined by objective measureable data to make sure it fits the original attribute target (6% better on subjective internal ratings than a Seat Leon Cupra for instance). It requires an engineering degree, a good feel for how a car behaves, a fairly reasonable level of driving ability (for vehicle dynamics and stability control) about 23 weeks abroad each year including 7 weeks in Northern Sweden, a lot of patience and a ludicrously high number of tyres.

For some reason, the general public, enthusiasts included, seem fairly blind to the amount of development work that goes in to the subjective aspects of a car. The 200 or so camouflaged prototypes that get papped of a new C Class for instance aren't just driving around for fun. Aside from interior build quality, the overall vehicle level attribute is the most import aspect of any connection we as humans have with a car. There are thousands of reasons people buy a car, but one of the most important ones is the way it drives. What that is like varies with the type of car, target customer, budget available and base design. I work on the electronic control side of dynamics which means we very much deal with the end result of every other engineers hard work, however, we can still quite dramatically affect the perception the press and public have of a car.

Ultimately those on here who wish to be cynical, can continue to be so if they wish, and clearly they will do as I doubt anything anyone says on here will change their opinion that the badges just get swapped. The reality of it is that this just simply isn't the case for any modern car.

There's a lot of cost involved in assessing and tuning even software. The reason why someone like Mercedes charge over a thousand quid to increase the speed limiter? The legal responsibility of the manufacturer means the car has to be tested and possibly retuned at the higher speed under all loading conditions. Whilst the end result may well be a different number in a file within an ECU, the legal requirement to allow that to happen costs a great deal of money which had to be recouped....and probably by quite a small number of buyers.

So believe it or not, manufacturers do spend a lot of time and money tuning in certain attributes to car with similar components. If you don't believe me, have a look at the number of different suspension bushes, dampers and steering racks you can order for the MK4 Golf platform.

And if you could experience an early prototype before it's been tuned by dynamics, engine cal, stability control and NVH, you'd realise just how much work goes in to developing a car. Rattly, barely driveable, boomy, unbalanced, crashy and inert doesn't even begin to cover it.

Edited by RacerMike on Tuesday 2nd September 00:18

mikeg15

286 posts

199 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
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Clever marketing shifts loads of Harley Davidsons and there is no rational justification for buying those either.

YoureAbeFroman

26 posts

114 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
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We have the same conundrum here in the US for the Golf R vs. CLA250& A3 Quattro. In some ways even Golf R vs. S3/CLA45 performance-wise.

samyalson

44 posts

116 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
quotequote all
Turbobanana said:
Does anybody REALLY care about the marketing?

Don't we just buy what we like? (And no, I am not wearing a Tesco suit or leatherette shoes etc).
Your comment tells me that marketers own your mind, you just can't see it.

EricE

1,945 posts

128 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
quotequote all
The whole MQB platform strategy seems bland to me from the point of a car enthusiast.
But that’s VAG now. Very effective cars and good quality/performance at their price points, just not very different from each other. Most of the difference is calibration and marketing. A slippery slope if you ask me.

Reminds me of this old Chris Harris video albeit on a different level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detai...


Edited by EricE on Tuesday 2nd September 08:57

3000GT ANT

347 posts

155 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
quotequote all
between those 2..............seat all day and both of the interior's are massively bland...........

r11co

Original Poster:

6,244 posts

229 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
quotequote all
RacerMike said:
Ultimately those on here who wish to be cynical, can continue to be so if they wish, and clearly they will do as I doubt anything anyone says on here will change their opinion that the badges just get swapped. The reality of it is that this just simply isn't the case for any modern car.
More weasily words! Of course they don't just swap badges anymore as that is too transparent. The game now is to create enough doubt in peoples' minds that they are not the same product in order to justify selling at two different price points (it has to look different, it has to be called something different), despite there being no difference where it actually matters, and I suspect that is exactly what you are doing above!

RacerMike

4,192 posts

210 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
quotequote all
r11co said:
More weasily words! Of course they don't just swap badges anymore as that is too transparent. The game now is to create enough doubt in peoples' minds that they are not the same product in order to justify selling at two different price points (it has to look different, it has to be called something different), despite there being no difference where it actually matters, and I suspect that is exactly what you are doing above!
I literally have no idea what you mean by weasily words?

I'm an engineer....I don't work for marketing. I spend 300+ days a year engineering the subjective aspects of cars using both subjective feel and objective engineering data. But then what do I know? I mean you clearly know more about my job than I do.....

Perhaps if you stopped being such a mouthy cynical keyboard warrior, you might actually learn something interesting about how cars are developed. There are a lot of people on here who work for car companies in engineering and development.

r11co

Original Poster:

6,244 posts

229 months

Tuesday 2nd September 2014
quotequote all
RacerMike said:
I literally have no idea what you mean by weasily words?
A weasel word (also, anonymous authority) is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that a specific and/or meaningful statement has been made, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated.

You tell us you work in the industry in unspecific terms - anonymous authority! You generalise about public opinion - vague ambiguous claims. I can't blame you though as it is clearly part of your training.

Wikipedia said:
Weasel words are likely to be used in advertising and in political statements, where encouraging the audience to develop a misleading impression of what was said can lead to advantages, at least in the short term (in the longer term, systematic deception is likely to be identified, with a loss of trust in the speaker).
Cynicism is a product of this sort of deception, not a hazard to be got round by it. I don't doubt that a lot of time and resources are put into engineering car traits, but I also do doubt that it is all done altruistically.

I take you back to my point about examples of cars that have been diminished from one generation to the next - the manufacturers clearly thought that the buyer would either not notice, not care or blind themselves to it due to faith in the product's image. Sometimes (subtle) marketing has to do even more than that - the change has to be managed to prevent fallout - a negative has to be promoted as a positive or attention has to be taken away from the change.

For example - the impending switch from rear to front wheel drive for the next BMW 1 series has been discussed at great length in PH. I am of the opinion that the sudden appearance of 'X-drive' badges on BMW saloons and the greater availablility of all-wheel drive versions of 3 and 5 series cars is part of this exercise to change the mindset of the BMW owner (or aspirational BMW owner) away from it being a rear-drive only marque.

Of course anyone in the know would be aware that it has been producing AWD vehicles for other markets for decades, but for a long time the RWD thing suited the marketing men in the UK as the BMW Ultimate Selling Point, plus they didn't want to be seen to be following Audi into the AWD saloon market - Audi had made it theirs in the mind of the UK buyer with 'Quattro'.

'S-drive' is the term BMW now apply to 2WD vehicles and I strongly suspect that it will be used to refer to both FWD and RWD cars when the next 1 series materialises, thus subtly suggesting commonality and glossing over the difference!

Edited by r11co on Tuesday 2nd September 12:37