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Written by Pat Devereux
Trading on your national culture is nothing new in the car industry. Particularly in the premium and luxury brands. The Germans have made a massively successful business of getting us to believe, rightly in some cases, wrongly in others, that their engineering is superior to anyone else"s.The Swedes sell us on intelligently avoiding risk altogether. And, even though none of the companies are still British owned, all of our home carmakers make sure people know there is a bit of James Bond, Ranulph Fiennes, Gordon Ramsay and The Queen beating at the heart of each of them.But not so much the Japanese luxury car companies. Rather than sell us on any of their enviable home country skills and traits, they typically gravitate towards an anonymous middle ground where they are almost invisible. If you didn"t already know that a Lexus or Infiniti came from Japan, there"s very little in the way they are designed and sold in the UK or elsewhere which tells you that they are.That"s sensible in one way. Most people don"t wake up one day and say right, I"m going to buy a Japanese car." They wake up and say I"ve got X amount of money to spend, what"s the most reliable, economical bang I can get for my buck. Oh, look, that Lexus/Infiniti has the best offer. I"ll just check what people think down the pub, then buy one of those". Or not.The Or Not is the way this invisibility is damaging. With no strong brand image of their own, it doesn"t matter how well they are built or drive. Or that the dealer remembers your name and birthday forever. The cars sell on price not prestige and adopt the image of their drivers and owners.All it takes then is for Steve Coogan to cast one of your cars as the wheels of the hilariously appalling early morning DJ Alan Partridge and your brand is hard-linked with that Argyle-checked tank-topped politically incorrect nightmare. And your mates in the pub say: "No mate. Buy the Merc instead".But that"s beginning to change. Even though Infiniti continues to lurch from one identity crisis to the next even after sponsoring the Red Bull F1 team for several seasons and having the world champion shill for them in ads, most people still have no idea whatsoever that an Infiniti is a brand of car Lexus is starting to get its story straight.The first signs of life started with the LFA supercar. That got the world"s attention. Then, just when we were thinking it was a one-off folly of a race-driving CEO, out pops a swift luxury speedboat, a hoverboard, and then, even more bizarrely, a naturally aspirated V8 coupe that blows the doors off some very established competition. With all that happening and many new exciting things in the works, we hear we had to ask: what the hell is going on at Lexus?To find out some answers, we went to Tokyo to have a word with its global head of brand and marketing, Spiros Fotinos. Rather than meeting in a faceless corporate office, we met Spiros at the company"s brand store, Intersect, in Aoyama, a leafy, super cool fashionista area of the city.Opened in 2013, rather than being a painfully disguised car showroom masquerading as a Zen studio (as Infiniti tried and baffled customers when it launched in the US), Intersect is an engaging, properly interesting tri-level building.It features the de rigeur espresso bar, a fine restaurant and a suitably shimmery Blade Runner-esque function space in the basement, which features the best car-lovers WC in Tokyo. It"s all designed to give you a physical sense of what Lexus thinks it"s selling. And the short answer is: not just cars it"s experiences.Most people still have no idea whatsoever that an Infiniti is a brand of car, but Lexus is starting to get its story straight.
Date written: 28 Oct 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 9739
Trading on your national culture is nothing new in the car industry. Particularly in the premium and luxury brands. The Germans have made a massively successful business of getting us to believe, rightly in some cases, wrongly in others, that their engineering is superior to anyone else"s.The Swedes sell us on intelligently avoiding risk altogether. And, even though none of the companies are still British owned, all of our home carmakers make sure people know there is a bit of James Bond, Ranulph Fiennes, Gordon Ramsay and The Queen beating at the heart of each of them.But not so much the Japanese luxury car companies. Rather than sell us on any of their enviable home country skills and traits, they typically gravitate towards an anonymous middle ground where they are almost invisible. If you didn"t already know that a Lexus or Infiniti came from Japan, there"s very little in the way they are designed and sold in the UK or elsewhere which tells you that they are.That"s sensible in one way. Most people don"t wake up one day and say right, I"m going to buy a Japanese car." They wake up and say I"ve got X amount of money to spend, what"s the most reliable, economical bang I can get for my buck. Oh, look, that Lexus/Infiniti has the best offer. I"ll just check what people think down the pub, then buy one of those". Or not.The Or Not is the way this invisibility is damaging. With no strong brand image of their own, it doesn"t matter how well they are built or drive. Or that the dealer remembers your name and birthday forever. The cars sell on price not prestige and adopt the image of their drivers and owners.All it takes then is for Steve Coogan to cast one of your cars as the wheels of the hilariously appalling early morning DJ Alan Partridge and your brand is hard-linked with that Argyle-checked tank-topped politically incorrect nightmare. And your mates in the pub say: "No mate. Buy the Merc instead".But that"s beginning to change. Even though Infiniti continues to lurch from one identity crisis to the next even after sponsoring the Red Bull F1 team for several seasons and having the world champion shill for them in ads, most people still have no idea whatsoever that an Infiniti is a brand of car Lexus is starting to get its story straight.The first signs of life started with the LFA supercar. That got the world"s attention. Then, just when we were thinking it was a one-off folly of a race-driving CEO, out pops a swift luxury speedboat, a hoverboard, and then, even more bizarrely, a naturally aspirated V8 coupe that blows the doors off some very established competition. With all that happening and many new exciting things in the works, we hear we had to ask: what the hell is going on at Lexus?To find out some answers, we went to Tokyo to have a word with its global head of brand and marketing, Spiros Fotinos. Rather than meeting in a faceless corporate office, we met Spiros at the company"s brand store, Intersect, in Aoyama, a leafy, super cool fashionista area of the city.Opened in 2013, rather than being a painfully disguised car showroom masquerading as a Zen studio (as Infiniti tried and baffled customers when it launched in the US), Intersect is an engaging, properly interesting tri-level building.It features the de rigeur espresso bar, a fine restaurant and a suitably shimmery Blade Runner-esque function space in the basement, which features the best car-lovers WC in Tokyo. It"s all designed to give you a physical sense of what Lexus thinks it"s selling. And the short answer is: not just cars it"s experiences.Most people still have no idea whatsoever that an Infiniti is a brand of car, but Lexus is starting to get its story straight.
Date written: 28 Oct 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 9739
