Creating a future marketing strategy for the GTR for one of my marketing classes.
I would just like some simple answers to the following questions. You do not need to be a marketing buff or business savvy to answer. All opinions are welcomed and desired.
I do realize these questions are open ended, somewhat leading and are being presenetd on a site where bias may be a factor. This is OK for what i’m after at the moment.
1)How did you feel about Nissan’s initial marketing of the GTR?
2)What area’s of their strategy would you have made changes too?
3)What changes would you like to see from Nissan in their future endeavours with the GTR?
4)Do you feel their strategic approaches should remain the same?
mmmm, for the first one, i think if you weren’t an enthusiest, you didnt hear too much about the GTR really… i worked accross the street at mazda and i heard just the hype from the salesman, and from us on son… but for TV and adds like that… they could have done alot more to represent the car itself not just nissan…
i would have made comercials that hit japan, hit here… maybe the market is different but i still feel it represented JUST the GTR not all of nissans line up.
3 and 4 i just think that all around the GTR wasnt marketed as the beast it is… here is a perfect example of a comercial that has hit the us and canada and does a justice to the car .
I don’t think Nissan marketed the GTR that much. The GTR already had a history and Nissan pretty much used that. And I can definitely say that the GTR was also geared more towards enthusiasts that already knew about it rather than trying to get new customers.
I don’t think I’ve seen a GTR commercial on TV but I’ve seen an Audi R8 commercial on TV.
And it worked, because all GTRs are sold out and are still in high demand. It’s kinda like any supercar in general, you don’t really need to create a marketing strategy for things like this.
What I’m getting at is that it’s kinda like the Corvette Z06, ZR1, Viper ACR…you don’t really need to market those cars. People already know about them.
The only thing I’d say Nissan should do is talk about how efficient / environmentally friendly it is even though it has great performance. But it’s not that great on gas.
1 - Not enough marketing , no tv add’s or any magazine adds that ive seen.
2 - They need to creat a little brother at a cheaper cost and give alot of publicity
3 - More Marketing needs to be done, More vechile features need to be done, Manual trans and or paddle shifting.
4 - some what yes but on the other hand giving their cars more publicity never hurts.
Despite the fact that the car speaks for itself and can live off the hype alone, you have to remember how small of a market Canada is for the GTR, why would they waste millions on advertising when it can sell on reputation alone?
Just a note:
In regards to (1); I really liked the idea that just prior to the release of production models, they paraded 2 gtr’s in a see-through trailer around asia and part of europe. I dont know if anyone else remembers seeing this, but they had a black and a white one i think in a small 2 car trailer with a transparent enclosure. I honestly thought that was an incredibly ingenious marketing ploy. You keep a secretive aura about the car but you show enough so that the people lucky enough to see will be like, “what was that?”.
edit: that being said, i think that strategy only worked because the actual visual-appeal of the GTR. Its quite the eye-catcher and isnt what i would call “conservative”.
i appreciate the consturctive serious comments and thoughts
this is going to help reiterate or debunk ideas, consturcts, and theories im already working on and help to develop a more indepth research analysis with actual probing questions, proper scales, ect ect
some believe it was nissan or their advertising agent, omd, behind it. Nissan has no say, they never confirmed or refused this, even though they tried to make it seem like an outside job.
It was a form of guerilla marketing. I do agree with the secrative nature being an ingenious ploy. It created a buzz about the vehicle that touched upon its emotional ties to pop culture and heritage. Many other car manufacturers have done this in the past with success and failure.
1)How did you feel about Nissan’s initial marketing of the GTR?
Personally, if I wasn’t a Nissan fan or interested in Japanese cars, I would not have known there was a new GTR or a GTR at all. I haven’t attended any autoshows within the past few years and I haven’t seen ANY “mainstream” (radio, tv, newspaper, flyer, poster on the street, etc.) ads. I guess that would suggest that Nissan’s initial marketing for the GTR was done poorly. On the other hand, if you look at it from the perspective of a car enthusiast, there were years and years of dreading for the production of the new skyline which created much anticipation for this car when it was in production. I think when you create the new marketing strategy for your marketing class, you need to at some point mention the different kinds of people involved in the sale of the GTR. (=
Hope that helped.
I don’t know about initial marketing, but I enjoyed the whole GTR vs. 911 Nordschleife lap time battle they had going on for awhile with the tire/driver controversy and all. I think that really helped with the GT-R’s marketing, for better or for worse who knows? It just generated a ton of conversation everywhere I found and that’s what I think Nissan was after. You’re right, Carlos Ghosn only wanted viral…didn’t want any a single ad to have a GTR in it.
The combined launch with GT5 was also really neat, as well as the marketing of how Polyphony was brought in to design the GTR’s navi unit interface.
I think Nissan should’ve tried to market the amount of technology and engineering that went into the design of the GTR a bit more. I know they certainly tried, but I think they should’ve reached out further and pushed harder (even if they would have to dumb things down a bit for the general public).
Bring it back to the tuner community! I think the new GTR has a different, more upscale target market than before. The ease of tuning issue though is understandable as cars today are becoming more and more ‘one time use’ only with all the plastic and electronics. The general trend is OEM’s just don’t want the car’s fiddled with. If they do, it’ll be pretty obvious.
Neutral on this one since I’m not too familiar on what their overall strategic plan was.
Btw, I’m assuming you’ve watched that documentary on the GTR’s launch on Discovery? It was posted on here awhile ago too.
I don’t really thing much marketing is needed for a car like this. They hardly marketed it at all, and still all the units that were shipped to Canada sold out. Cars like this don’t exactly need a lot of advertising in my opinion because the guys that end up buying them aren’t exactly influenced by advertising - they either know what it is and want it, or they don’t.
I know my input probably won’t help your marketing project but its the way I see it. Look at other high dollar sport/luxury cars. hardly ever see any advertising for them unless its a lower end model from the brand that they’re trying to convince the average family man that he needs one and CAN afford it.
Take Mercedes Benz for example. The C-Class is the cheapest “Benz” you can buy. I say that because a B class hardly counts. With the new body style being released I’ve seen a few advertisements for them. But the S-Class? Can’t say I’ve ever seen one advertised. Or an SL, or SLK, CLK, etc.
They didn’t market because they didn’t have to. Am I making sense?
i remember when it first came out… every magazine on the news stands had a gtr on the cover at one point! Ever car show has done an episode on it… does nissan really need to advertise something that is already so limited (im assuming production is limited so correct me if im wrong) and has received tons of publicity in the enthusiast market. So i would expect many of the vehicle owners are involved in that market.
my opinion: strategy should stay the same unless they require larger number of sales (once again assuming production of these vehicles is not significant)
i would assume over time things get boring and an advertising campaign would be needed to bump sales or a redesign etc. but that’s talking years down the road
