Time to Shift Car Ads out of Neutral: Has Automotive advertising lost its spark?

Back in the days of Mad Men, car ads were considered the holy grail of advertising. In the series, Don Draper tells his team, “Every agency on Madison Avenue is defined by the moment they got their car”. From classic print ads to early TV, all of the big auto brands created memorable ads that are still spoken about today.

But research suggests that auto ads have lost some of their ‘va va voom'.

According to System 1, “nobody in UK car advertising stands out – almost all the Top 20 advertisers average the same modest two-star score”. This ranks auto ads below adverts for oral hygiene and photocopiers. For products with such exciting creative potential, the marketing has become too serious – and it feels like a waste.

With our latest campaign for Suzuki, we wanted to bring back big ideas to car advertising, with something that stood out. We had spoken to people through our Human Understanding Lab to see what they thought about current car ads. It appears we aren’t the only ones with an appetite for change. There were some common themes, that are hard to disagree with.

“Every car ad looks the same… …Sweeping mountain roads …City drive-bys …Neon lit rainy nights…Very attractive men and women.. And parents that look too happy to be on a road trip with two young kids”

Has best practice become a bit beige?

The need to shift metal combined with reduced marketing budgets has resulted in short-termism and risk aversion. It’s become ‘best practice’ that manufactures need to show off their car as the most sleek, speedy and stylish with loads of great tech. The result? Embellished product demos packed with rational proof points trying to sell you the latest model.

Perhaps because cars are such big purchases, advertisers feel the need to be more rational. But this is not the case and not playing into emotions is a wasted opportunity. In the words of Byron Sharp, “Of all the categories, automotive needs even more emotion. Most consumers are not in buying mode. You need to be more salient. More memorable for when they are in buying mode”.

Our Human Understanding Lab at TMW teaches us that emotions play a huge role in the car buying journey. We are intrinsically emotive creatures after all. A car brand may win our hearts and ultimately dictate our decision-making. The rational stuff just helps us justify our decision afterwards, post-rationalising our choice with model specs, customer reviews and price comparisons, so we feel we’ve ‘done our research’.

But without an emotive idea rooted in a true human insight, these ads too easily go unnoticed by consumers. They don’t grab attention, and they don’t stick in people’s minds. And with car brands being some of the biggest ad spenders – this is an expensive mistake to make.

There have been some great ones that do give the ad moguls of the 60s a run for their money. Audi ‘Clowns’, Fiat ‘Operation No Grey' and of course the famous Skoda ‘Cake’, (the best auto ad on the System 1 database). It goes without saying, these bold choices have paid off – proving reinventing the wheel beats ‘best practice’.

While brands from almost every other sector are pushing boundaries, showing that defying category conventions is a winning formula, the auto industry has remained relatively standstill.

Given the competitiveness of the market, disruption shouldn’t be a nice-to-have, but a necessity. This is particularly true for smaller brands, who have no choice but to punch above their weight creatively. As Bill Bernbach put it, “creativity is the last legal unfair competitive advantage we can take to ‘run over’ the competition”.

So when we were set a brief by Suzuki, with the clear objective to stand out from the crowd with a quirky ad, it was music to our ears. We wanted to create something up there with the greats.

Here’s how we approached it…

Breaking conventions requires an emotive twist

Coming up with an unconventional idea takes an unconventional human insight.

A particularly powerful way to break convention is to make a virtue of a weakness. Flipping your brand’s ‘problem’ into your opportunity, like Avis, Guinness and VW have done before.

But not many people drive a Suzuki.

We’re taught in advertising to tell everyone how much everybody else loves the product in an attempt to win them over. Social proof is Psychology 101, right? Focussing on how few people drive a Suzuki is the opposite of that. But we spoke to owners, and they were proud to be part of a small club – in on a hidden gem they would quite like to keep to themselves.

Our answer was in the psychology of secrecy. People love a secret. Secrecy is sexy. And most importantly it builds intrigue. We doubled down on this:

Not many people drive a Suzuki, but those that do are proud as punch. And when you find something this good, it’s human nature to want to keep it to yourself.

What if we were to hide cars rather than flaunt them? That’s something that’s not been done before. And we landed on something we think is pretty cool.

And we pushed it.

And pushed it.

Unconventional creative will win in the long-term

The automotive market has always been competitive, but the heat is about to turn up. With new legislation coming into play, car brands will be fighting to sell a lot of electric vehicles to a small section of buyers who feel ready to purchase them. To stand a chance, auto brands will need to think outside the box and deliver something truly creative.

This will require juggling new car launches with the need to build a brand simultaneously. Most brands currently lean too hard on the former. With creativity still the biggest driver of profitability that a brand can control, manufactures can’t lose sight of the top of the funnel too.

Before this campaign, Suzuki told us there was ‘feeling beige’. Afterward, they said for the first time they had something unique that felt true to their brand.

Our approach to unconventional ideas:

- Take a challenger mindset: when you can’t outspend your competition, you must outsmart them. Do something that the big players couldn’t, that really rings true to your brand.

- Find a human truth: joining the dots between scientific insights and creativity drives better communications. Identify little quirks that ‘shouldn’t work’ in advertising but do work with people. Psychological biases and heuristics found in behavioural science can have a huge sway on car buying decisions, but aren’t always leveraged to their full potential.

- Don’t be afraid to have a bit of fun: there are enough serious ads out there, especially in the auto space. Humour works to catch attention and is more memorable too. Stop taking what we do too seriously and take a more light-hearted approach – people want entertainment not ads at the end of the day.

- Commit to an idea – find an interesting concept and double down on it across every consumer touchpoint, bringing it to life in the best way possible for each channel. The notion of secrecy lives and breathes across our entire campaign.

Phoebe Rodgers is a senior planner at TMW