Castrating a Great Brand: Land Rover Gets Lost In India

According the the folks over at AutoblogGreen, Land Rover's new Indian ownership, the Tata Conglomerate, has no idea how to handle the luxury automotive marquee they've added to their stable of car companies. Tata, in a fit of true boobery, plans to re-invent Land Rover as the new green machine. This has "retarded" graffiti-ed all over it. The only thing that should be green about a Land Rover is the classic English green-paint heavily associated with the brand's heritage and the hope that someone can figure out how to turn the company profitable. Land Rover's are about taming, traversing, and conquering exotic and hazardous environments with class, elegance, and English sophistication. Nowhere does this brand even remotely align with the meek and faux-sensitivity hyped by urban-dwelling effete liberals who pride themselves on pretending to care by over-paying for a crappy car to impress their shallow friends outside the yoga studio. The Japanese have already gifted the American consumer with the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and forthcoming Nissan Leaf. The American tax-payer is picking up the bill for the doomed Chevrolet Volt on this front. Cutting costs, improving efficiencies, and leveraging technology can all be smart and strategic business moves, if executed in the proper context. However, turning a brand upside down and negating its heritage is a messy way of committing business seppuku. Is Tata looking to build a successful car business or just ruin a great British brand?

The irony was not lost of the werewolf, when the former colonial subjects acquired two jewels of the British automotive industry. However, the double-irony truly rests in the fact that Britain's alpha colonial progeny, the United States, punted Jaguar and Land Rover to the more backwards and confused colonial offspring in India. Land Rover and Jaguar's have been dregs for years, not on account of style or design, but on account of crappy reliability ratings. The answer is so simple, if Tata, or any automotive giant was serious about re-igniting these brands, just building a car that works on a regular basis would do wonders. Somehow, that simple message seems to be lost on everyone who ends up owning these brands. It looks like Land Rover and Jaguar will end like the British Empire, with a weak yelp, as opposed to a glorious roar.

Dodge Challenger Ad: Cars and Freedom

Setting aside the fact that Chrysler has become a total joke of a car company and the American automotive industry is in shambles thanks to shortsighted management and gluttonous unions, this television spot qualifies as awesome.

Christopher Lambert: From C-list Action Joke to French Art-House Star

Although the first act of his career has been immortalized by yelling the "there can be only one" in some ridiculous unidentifiable accent from Highlander, it's nice to know that even cheese-ball action stars can recast themselves in a substantive way. The Guardian has a great piece on Christopher Lambert's evolution to Christophe, the latest sensation in the trendy French film scene. There is something liberating and redeeming about capturing a new lease on life. Good for Monsieur Lambert.

Toyota Totaled?

Despite the tragic implications for a few very dead individuals, watching the national drama unfold around Toyota's deadly brake pedal flaw has been fascinating. The National Post has an interesting op-ed by  Terence Corcoran covering the details of what is happening to Toyota from a skeptic's perspective. He downplays Toyota's culpability, and focuses on the domestic reaction from both a governmental and business perspective. There is no questioning that the Obama administration and certain congressional democrats have behaved like buffoons, that Detroit is giddy with joy, and that Toyota itself has tripped pretty severely on the public relations front. Given the multiple forces at work, this business drama has the makings of great business school case study.

First things first, Toyota screwed the pooch. One of the hallmarks of Toyota's brand image was quality. That association is a core component of what distinguishes Toyota from it's American rivals in the minds of consumers. Every large scale auto-manufacturer will have a recall at some-point or a design flaw, especially if they are volume players. Managing these moments is what determines a company's brand image in the minds of consumers. Remember the famous Tylenol Recall of 1982 that did wonders for Johnson & Johnson. Getting ahead of the issue, preempting any fears from consumers by letting them know that they are a priority, and exceeding crisis management expectations are essential from a brand image preservation perspective. The werewolf is dismayed that Toyota didn't have some massive contingency drawn-up just in case a disaster like this occurred.  It's risk management 101 for a company like Toyota.  Toyota's management clearly seemed a little slow to respond, was skeptical of consumer fears, and allowed the issue to explode into a North American market drama that the werewolf thinks has adversely  impacted their brand for the short and potentially medium term. Given Toyota's discipline as a company, their weak response and poor brand management is the most shocking element of this tale at work.

Granted, Toyota has long been the arch-rival of GM and Ford ever since their arrival on these shores four decades ago started eroding Detroit's dominance in it's home market. Toyota built better cars leveraging more operational efficiencies, their cars lasted longer and developed a perception of quality, and they avoided detrimental union obligations. Most importantly Toyota offered the consumers what they wanted instead of boring automotive bureaucratic abominations pushed by Detroit. Detroit's resentment of Toyota is not unlike the blood-feud between the Hatfield's and McCoy's. In today's day and age, conflicts of interest abound. The US Government has a large ownership stake in both Chrysler and GM, those dastardly unions heavily financed and supported the current occupant of the White House, plus this administration has displayed a tendency to be protectionist and anti-free trade. It doesn't take a genius to see the potential problems at play working against Toyota from a governmental standpoint. However, these problems aren't insurmountable, they just need to be noted and Toyota needs to integrate them into their communications strategy as they launch a recovery.As much as Detroit seems to be enjoying this meltdown at Toyota, they seem to be missing the message the credibility isn't going to be sourced in a nasty web of conflicts of interest and lame rhetoric. Good management and valuing consumers will do that just fine.

Brand image and commitment to that image are what lead to credibility. Credibility fuels consumer purchasing and loyalty. At the moment, credibility seems to be wanting in all sectors of this drama. What do you all think?