Wednesday 11th December 2002

Creed Matters

Do slogans sell cars? Ford's about to try again...

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[Nightmare]

Another good article.....and interesting. Though no doubt if your slogan was adopted Fords comment would be 'why should someone be apologetic or driving one of our cars?' which is a afir point.

I often wonder whether or not there is any point in spending the sums they do in brand engineering... Rather like advertising. I had the fun (and it was) of sitting through the new VX220 turbo advertising market research last week....and the quesion I wanted to ask was "do you honestly think that someone who is going to buy a 25 grand car is going to pay any real attention to the adverts?" If they do, they shouldnt be buying a car like that!

[corcoran]

i think "screw you. I drive a (car)" has already been already taken by BMW.

[B10]

"Eight and a half billion dollars on consultancy fees", I'm in the wrong job. You can charge this much and come up with poor limp wristed slogan like this. MG had more balls but were slammed by Mr & Mrs PC.

[levensnevel]

RF again 100% spot on.
I still haven't seen any company beating the slogan of our national pride, Philips:
"Let's make things better"
100% true, it couldn't be any worse
To be quite honest I don't give a monkey about slogan's. I buy what I need first and at a later stage I consider the 'nice to have' things.

Levensnevel

[deltaf]

What about British Rails old slogan, " Were getting there"?
LMAO

[Podie]

Perhaps we should consider the fact that these slogans are aimed at the masses... and they lap them up. What's the percentage of the population that reads the Sun? Something like 70%? And they believe every word...

As a group, people are stupid.. so slogans work.

[nubbin]

Ford, Vauxhall, Toyota, Nissan, Peugeot, Renault and all the other mass-market bods could save money by clubbing together and having a common slogan - I would suggest "It's very much like theirs, only better". What do you think? I only charged 7 billion dollars for that.

[Podie]

nubbin -

think I need to move into the ad side of the company "yeah, I want to earn loads for complete bollox..." "yeah, I'd love to go on a flower arranging course.." "go on then, I'll have a G&T..."

[nitetrane]

and "Like a rock" does what to insire?
Have you taken the time to actually watch a rock?.......It doesn't do anything, nothing, a rock just sits there.

[jjz109]

new slogan for ford in full, is.. Look the damm ford is broken.. Again !!!

[v8thunder]

Best slogan ever was the one used by Lotus for the Europa back in the '60s - "If you've just bought an ordinary sports car, we're sorry"

[ErnestM]

v8thunder said: Best slogan ever was the one used by Lotus for the Europa back in the '60s - "If you've just bought an ordinary sports car, we're sorry"

...or the one in the US in the late 90's for the Esprit:
It doesn't compete with other sports cars - it competes with sex

Actually Lotus are using the Extreme Motoring tagline here in the States right now. Here is a copy of the latest Lotus Magazine ad, which is clearly designed to poke a finger in the eye of the "environmentalists".

ErnestM

[tuscansix]

How about the latest Ford Focus seen this evening on TV. There is a power cut on a stormy night on the coast, woman in Focus is waiting for bloke on boat to come back into port. Now following the Power Cut the Lighthouse shuts down, I'm sure that would come as a surprise to anyone who has ever been out at sea, so the woman drives up to the headland and turns on her lights.
Right, so in a storm if you have a Ford Focus you can act as Lighthouse and that means that everytime you go out in your car with your headlights on you'll blind everyone else on the road.

[wfg]

So tell me, Rob, you enjoyed psychology class, huh?

[Geoffh]

Renault seem to have some good slogans. A bland box a few years ago was "Tough on the streets". What! It damages the road??

But surely the best ever was their one for the Renault 5. "Renault build a better car". Could they have made anything worse??

[bruce fielding]

OK, OK, occasionally we really do come up with gold-plated crap in advertising. But there's no way on earth that Ford were charged billions for any slogan. I know - I've come up with some in the past for them (and I won't hold my hand up and tell you that I created 'Everything we do is driven by you', or that my wife was responsible for 'Backbone of Britain'). Point is that it's getting harder and harder to say anything at all that is sustainable, legal, and worthwhile these days. All you're left with is the bland. So give us a break. We do still come up with some crackers (and I won't hold my hand up and tell you that I created 'Life's a Catwalk'). The UK is still revered globally as the benchmark for advertising, and if, occasionally, our clients won't let us do what we know we can, then, I guess it's like most service professions, in that 'clients get the work they deserve'.