In even the worst press kits, there’s a treasure house of information to be gained about the specific
vehicle in question as well as the company that builds it. Infrequently, press kits will say more coincidentally about the company than they ever intended. This is just such a case. The Durango’s all-new interior is a shock owners always merited but never expected. This single sentence, a simple, harmless intro to the giant improvements made to the Durango’s previously sub-par interior, was discovered minding its own business on page 12 of Dodge’s 104-page novel that’s the 2011 Durango press kit. The writer’s intention, I’d hope, was to proffer that customers would be overwhelmed by the quality and value of the new Durango’s interior, but it claims lots
more than that. In reality it just about sums up the previous few years of the Chrysler
corporation. I propose the following translation :
Look, we both know that Dodge interiors have been rubbish for years now, and we both know you, the buyer, merited better from a
mainstream automaker. But we at Dodge / Chrysler refused to / could not give it to you, and you’ve been
unhappy by us for so long that you don’t expect better anymore. Boy, will you be shocked when you
see the new Durango’s interior, as we finally got the memo on client satisfaction. It sounds ruthless, but the truth is colder and harder than a Caliber’s interior. There it is, in Dodge’s own press materials : a tacit admission that the brand ( and company as a whole ) has been under-delivering for some time now. But there’s also hope when trying to finish. Because let’s be honest, it worked nicely for Dominoes. As you may have heard, the legendary pizza purveyor recently launched a new, self-degrading press campaign calling out its poor-quality pizza and
promising the shopper that they’d get the better-tasting pizza they deserved from here on out. Seem
familiar? Dodge, Dominoes, they even sound similar. Makes you ponder whether they employed the same PR expert. even though it was unintentional, could you blame Dodge for trying? Of course , Dominoes sales spiked after the new pizza and accompanying ad campaign launched. We, as clients, are fed so much selling rubbish in advertising nowadays that it’s actually refreshing to hear a major firm admit their mistakes and speak clearly about the reality of their products. Many food critics opined the new Dominoes pizza was only marginally better than the old stuff, but it did not hurt sales. The embarrassed ad s and promises of redemption made an impression on consumers.
of course, it’s a very , very big leap from a $10 pizza to a $30,000 SUV. Automobiles are the second largest single-item buy a person or family makes after a place, and in this turbulent economic environment, nobody wants to throw money away on a bad product. With so much money at stake, will theyactually be willing to risk it on company that has not posted a profit in years and needed to be bailed out by the U.S. Executive twice? Nobody knows, but Dodge truly doesn’t have a choice here. Anyone who’s so much as seen footage of the old Durango’s interior and the new one will have an opinion about the changes especialy Toyota Service Durant. A lot of them won’t think highly of the old interior, and Dodge can’t hold it against them because it was really bad. Whether the folks at Chrysler like it or not, comparisons will be drawn between their old products and new, and they won’t be kind to the old.
That leaves Chrysler with two options : pretend like the old product does not exist, or embrace it. Detroit’s no stranger to the head-in-the-sand approach, but the new bosses seem to have woken their corporations up to the incontrovertible
fact that it wasn’t working. When it comes to cars, especially bad ones, consumers have a particularly long memory. They don’t forget just because the automaker does not talk about it. And if you are Dodge, what do you have to lose? Anybody turned off by this approach probably was not going to buy a new Dodge anyway. Fact is, the new releases are significantly better than the old ones, and the folks behind them really believe strongly in them. The Durango’s fraternal twin, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, saw agreat jump in sales and for good cause : it’s immensely better than the old one for ESD Dallas. Nobody enjoys swallowing their pride,
but it is frequently strong medication. In the end, the self-defacing ad campaign only works if the new product is basically good, and in this situation it is. Now,
Dodge and their Chrysler overlords just have to keep it up.
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