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Youth
Sells, But Who’s Buying?
Toyota
has invested millions advertising its new Scion directly—and
aggressively—to hip tech-savvy subcultures; the question is,
do the subcultures care?
By
Katharine Jones
Ian Jones, a 24-year-old from Brunswick, likes cars. More
specifically, he likes customizing cars. He’s got stacks of
magazines on the subject and has been known to drop a few
grand on performance and body modifications. Until about a
year ago, he drove a 1998 Mazda 626 on which he added a custom-made
body kit, street suspension and a custom interior. He also
tweaked the engine.
Jason DeCarmine is another car enthusiast. While living in
the Tampa Bay area, he worked for an auto-body shop, stylizing
and modifying cars, and in his spare time, personally customized
his own Chevy Blazer and Ford Ranger.
Like many car hobbyists, Jones and DeCarmine both have taken
notice of the Scion, a new line of cars produced by the Toyota
Motor Company that is currently being marketed as a sleek,
affordable and, most importantly, customizable car. The car
offers hundreds of options for owners to customize their rides,
ranging from taillight garnishing and body kits to subwoofers
and MP3-player-compatible stereos. It seems like a sweet deal,
but neither of these two young men would consider buying one.
“I’d feel dumb just sitting in one,” says DeCarmine.
When the Scion (which, as one Chicago Daily Herald
editor joked, rhymes with “high on”) was unleashed in June
2003, the Toyota Motor Company began an aggressive advertising
campaign employing ATTIK, a London-based advertising company
whose edgy campaigns have been used to sell products for Adidas,
Virgin Mobile and MTV. The company’s Web site claims that
it is “known for its progressive execution in design and its
branding expertise.” Local dealerships say that the Scion,
with its modest price (depending on the model, the car runs
between $12,480 and $15,950) and its sleek, modern look, is
popular with buyers of all ages. But after one look at the
Scion’s Web site, with its fancy flash animation, or a quick
flip through the 80-plus page catalogue, which could easily
be confused for an artsy, underground fanzine with its trendy
street slang, it is plain to see that the marketing of the
Scion is aimed directly at young drivers hoping to buy into
the hip auto- customizing scene. The brand’s mission is to
“satisfy a trend setting youthful buyer through distinctive
products and innovative, consumer-driven process.”
This “consumer-driven process” is most clear on the Scion’s
Web site, where visitors not only can build their own tricked-out,
customized wheels, but also can shop for mix CDs and Scion
gear, which includes the same shirts, sunglasses, beanies
and pullovers you might find at Urban Outfitters. The site
also links to something called Scion World, an online forum
where people can talk about how much they like their Scions
and how they plan to customize them. Also offered on the Web
site are contests for graphic artists and hiphop musicians.
It’s an obvious marketing agenda, one which must have required
a lot of money and research to develop—all to appeal to a
group of people who, according to Jones, “don’t give a fuck
about buying a Scion.”
Andrew Lynch is a brand planner for Arnold World Wide, an
advertising agency that since 1995, has been the advertising
giant behind the music-video-like Volkswagen advertisements
(remember Trio’s “Da Da Da”?). As was the case with the Scion,
marketers for the car company tried to develop credibility
among young, trend- following buyers. Brand planners collect
information from all forms of market research, including consumer-based
focus groups, interviews with cultural experts, and consumer
research.
“It
makes the campaign cohesive, and not just a few random advertisements,”
says Lynch. “If you have a strategy as a template, that strategy
should ideally hold all the executions in a campaign.”
A complicated process, brand planning focuses not on developing
a brand for a target demographic, (which generally refers
to age, education and income brackets), but rather on a certain
mindset, which in the business is referred to as a “psychograph.”
Psychographic indicators focus on personality types and lifestyles.
Some advertisers feel that by focusing on a psychograph instead
of a demographic, they are able to reach a wider audience
and can further develop the brand’s personality.
“When
Arnold World Wide took over Volkswagen’s advertising in 1995,
[Volkswagen] already had its own personality,” says Lynch.
“The cars themselves attracted a certain kind of person. We
did research with people who loved their Volkswagens and found
that they were a little quirky, a little left of center. They
kind of didn’t mind that their car wasn’t perfect because
it had a certain vibe and feel. Generally, they were people
who liked to drive with the windows down, and with the music
playing loud. We put that all together. . . . We [at Arnold]
thought that we understood the Volkswagen mindset.”
But with very little in common style-wise with its parent
company, Toyota, and no history to build from, Scion brand
planners must have looked elsewhere—in this case, the culture
of auto-customizing enthusiasts who were already part of an
underground movement, one that has been becoming more mainstream
thanks in part to the 2001 hit The Fast and the Furious,
which was less a movie about a undercover cop and more
a showcase of tricked-out wheels, and shows like MTV’s Pimp
My Ride, on which owners of old, junky cars get them revamped
with lots of customized bling-bling.
The customizing options of the Scion mimic the after-market
modifications people typically make to other Japanese import
cars, like the Honda Civic and the Acura RSX, which for years
have been embraced by the urban auto-customization culture
as palettes for creativity. Hoping that young consumers would
want to buy into a ready-made imitation of this culture, Toyota
entered the market with the Scion. And though the price tag
of the car itself is modest, the company stands to make a
tidy profit on each customizable option: Ordering custom rear
taillights from Scion, for example, would set you back an
extra $275; ordered from eBay, they’d cost about half as much.
Anyway, for automotive-customization enthusiasts, their craft
is a matter of pride. It is a long, personal process of body
and suspension modifications, and interior and exterior styling
begins with a stock-model car. Ordering a customized Scion
skips over this essential process altogether.
“They’re
making money off something we created,” says DeCarmine. “and
I don’t think that picking a few options out of a catalogue
is really customizing. . . . They’re just doing that to make
profit.”
And it’s not just customizing purists who are passing on the
Scion. Adam Branson wouldn’t buy one either. Earlier this
year, Branson, a 20-year-old photography student living in
Manhattan, was paid 10 bucks an hour by Cunning, an advertising
partner of ATTIK, to walk around Time Square with a fake tattoo
of the word “Scion” on his forehead and tout the coolness
of the car to passersby. But the gig wasn’t enough to convince
him to part with $15K.
“They
[Cunning] told us to talk about the Scion like it was the
perfect car for college students because it’s cheap and cool.
I mean, if I had the money I might consider buying one, but
I’m just worried about this year’s tuition.”
Whether or not Scion will ever be able to attract its original
target consumer is anyone’s guess. People like Jones believe
that the Toyota Motor Company is completely misdirected, and
have “intentionally used inexpensive products like graffiti
and mix tapes to create a ‘Parents just don’t understand’
vibe.”
The Scion is, however, selling to young professional couples,
soccer moms and older drivers too, like David Kerschner, a
50-year-old chiropractor from East Greenbush who doesn’t consider
himself young, urban, or hip. He bought his xA Scion last
month at Northway Toyota after researching cars on the Internet.
The car just happened to fit his needs for a fuel-efficient,
economically priced car. The Scion also looked nice to him
and handled well on the road. But the most important factor
in Kerschner’s decision to purchase his xA was the upfront
pricing and no-hassle sales approach he received at the dealership.
“I
like the Scion for the way that it’s packaged,” said Kerschner.
“It comes with everything you need. The only other fees are
for customization, which I didn’t bother to do. I like driving
it. . . . It’s my main car now. I take it to work, to the
grocery store and around town. I save my old SUV for bad weather.”
When asked whether or not he uses the space in the trunk to
cart around DJ equipment—a feature the Scion brochure proudly
touts—Kerschner just laughs and says, “No, but there’s room
enough for my golf clubs.”
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