IT’S NOT CALLED BRAND POSITIONING HELL FOR NOTHIN’.

By Peter M. DeLorenzo

Detroit. Automotive marketing, like the business itself, is one of the toughest endeavors in the world. While from the outside it may look easy, it is anything but that. Yes, the product is paramount, but if the launch is bumbled and the communication about that product is garbled or less than it should be, a golden opportunity is wasted, and marketing operatives are left “looking for new challenges.”

One of the major problems about marketing – and advertising – is that a lot of people know what’s good after the fact. It’s easy to pick out brand strategies that are successful and why, and it’s easy to identify a commercial that airs and pronounce it “good.” But committing to a focused brand strategy, and then identifying advertising creative that supports and enhances that strategy is extremely difficult. Sometimes it’s even a go-with-your-gut crapshoot, because all of the research that can be mustered beforehand only reveals so much.

I’ve written about – and rated – many marketing strategies and advertising campaigns on this site for 22+ years now. There have been a few thoroughly outstanding campaigns, along with some truly excellent efforts, many decidedly average ones unfortunately and, of course, a cornucopia of craptastic campaigns that should have never seen the light of day. 

One thing these marketing campaigns all shared from the start was that the initial work began from a brand positioning statement. Sounds simple enough, right? Put together a group of words that best projects what the brand represents to the real world and voila! That’s easy, isn’t it? Except it is definitely not. Why? These carefully crafted statements are intensely fought over by an array of fiefdoms entrenched on the client marketing side, and, of course, by their counterparts at the advertising agencies. Everybody wants a piece of these statements on both sides of the aisle, so when an agreement is finally reached, it’s a minor miracle. 

That’s just step one. But amazingly enough, all of that hard work to come up with those brand positioning statements can instantly go off the rails when those brand statements end up creeping into the actual advertising. This usually happens when clients become attached to the brand positioning language because it makes them feel good about their respective brands – and themselves. But when that happens, it usually never ends well. Brand positioning statements are just that, and they're not meant to end up in the advertising. But it happens all too frequently, and it results in “less than” advertising that doesn’t do justice to the brand. And I'm being kind.

So, given this background then, I have to applaud Stellantis operatives for having the cojones to present brand positioning statements for all of the brands under their watch last Thursday, with emphasis on their lineup of future EVs. This was no coincidence, either, as the perception that Stellantis is exactly nowhere with their EV plans is an actual thing, and the company wanted to put to rest that train of thought out in the media sphere.

Mission accomplished? Not exactly. Though it was refreshing to see Stellantis “put it out there,” so to speak, that doesn’t mean they got the results they wanted. Let’s take a look…

Jeep: "Zero emission freedom." Not exactly accurate; in fact, it’s not even close. Plug-in hybrids will dominate Jeep’s “zero emission” premise for the foreseeable future, with the product rollout taking years at least, and that’s if everything goes well. Sorry, but that doesn’t translate to “zero emission” in my book. Stellantis teased fully-electric Jeeps by 2025, but will that come to fruition with noteworthy volume? A giant “we’ll see.”

Ram: "Built to serve a sustainable planet." Hmm, really? Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares suggested that the brand will be prepared if there actually is a mass market for electric pickup trucks in a couple of years. In the meantime, that statement is unmitigated bullshit.

Chrysler: "Clean technology for a new generation of families." To this I say, huh? That Stellantis is clinging to the notion that there’s a place in the world for the Chrysler brand based on whether or not they can keep building minivans that people want is quaintly misguided. That there wasn’t much promised beyond the words in the brand positioning statement suggests to me that this is one brand – despite its myriad accomplishments – that could easily be relegated to the dustbin of history. And Tavares know it.

Dodge: "Tear up the streets… not the planet." Stellantis operatives openly admitted that it has pretty much reached peak HEMI V8-power in its current Dodge Challenger and Dodge Charger muscle cars. And with Stellantis committing to be part of the coming EV era for real, they will be transitioning to something called "eMuscle" cars by 2024. But unless they stop showing burnouts in their advertising – the biggest one-trick pony image of the last decade – which isn’t even remotely good for the planet, this is going to be one very painful transition. 

Alfa Romeo: "From 2024, Alfa becomes Alfa e-Romeo." To this I say, WTF? The fact that the Alfa “serpent” is becoming a power plug doesn’t pique my interest in the least. Stellantis inherited this premium brand, but I don’t think the transition to EV is going to go well. In fact, this very well could be the one brand that doesn’t survive the “Grand Transition” to EV.

DS Automobiles: "The art of travel, magnified." Sounds interesting enough. Launched in 2014, this obscure premium brand (until further notice at least) is said to revolve around the ideas of craftsmanship and "French savoir-faire." It will participate in the premium group at Stellantis with Alfa Romeo and Lancia. Why do I feel a train wreck coming on?

Lancia: "The most elegant way to protect the planet." Even though Lancia has had its day(s) in Italy, the idea that it survives as an “elegant” EV is another stretch for Stellantis. 

Maserati: "The best in performance luxury, electrified." Wow, talk about a brand positioning statement that could be applied to any number of luxury manufacturers. It’s now clear to me that Stellantis doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping the Alfa Romeo, DS, Lancia and Maserati brands in existence as luxury EVs. This is classic automotive arrogance in all its glory. Maybe Tavares should have introduced the following brand positioning statement for the company’s EV future: “We’re Stellantis and you’re not.”

Opel/Vauxhall: "Green is the new cool." In the immortal words of John McEnroe: “You can’t be serious!” I don’t care if this German brand plans on becoming fully electric by 2028; that brand positioning statement sounds easily a decade old. To this I’ll add, why bother?

Fiat: "It's only green when it's green for all." Cute, and wildly optimistic. EVs simply aren’t all that affordable yet. And this Italian mass-market brand has been on life support for decades now. But in an EV world? Goodnight and good luck.

Abarth: "Heating up people, but not the planet." This is just flat-out embarrassing. No further comment necessary.

Peugeot: "Turning sustainable mobility into quality time." Unless you plan on building autonomous vehicles for the masses, like next week, what a way to ruin this former flagship brand. At this point, Tavares should have called “timeout” on the meeting and left.

Citroen: "Citroen electric: Well-being for all!" I don’t know, maybe “Shiny Happy EVs” would work better.

Again, this stuff isn’t easy, but there was really no urgent or compelling reason for Stellantis to hang its collective corporate asses in the breeze and go on record with this nonsense. Couldn't they have just presented a technical white paper delineating the scope of its planned EV technologies without identifying the brands that this future technology would be applied to? I would suggest a couple of things to Stellantis: 1. Work on the brand positioning statements closer to when you actually have real products to talk about. Maybe it will broaden your horizons and make better sense, because it's clear that there is a lot of vaporware here. 2. Stop thinking you have the firepower to sustain and differentiate multiple luxury EV brands. You don’t, and you won’t be able to either.

The carefully crafted image of Tavares is that he’s a smart guy. But I’ve known plenty of allegedly smart people in this business who thought they could juggle multiple luxury brands better than anyone else. And most of them failed miserably. He should really take note and stop listening to the dulcet tones of his own thought balloons for once.

It’s not called Brand Positioning Hell for nothin’.

And that’s the High-Kilowatt Truth for this week.