In even the worst press kits, there’s a wealth of information to be gained about the specific
vehicle in question as well as the company that builds it. Sometimes, press kits will say more
accidentally about the company than they ever intended. This is a case. The Durango’s all-new interior is a surprise owners always merited but never expected. This single sentence, a straightforward, inoffensive introduction to the massive enhancements made to the Durango’s formerly sub-par interior, was discovered minding its own business on page twelve of Dodge’s 104-page novel that’s the 2011 Durango press kit. The writer’s plan, I’d hope, was to suggest that patrons would be overcome by the quality and cost of the new Durango’s interior, nevertheless it announces
more than that. In fact , it just about sums up the previous few years of the Chrysler
corporation. I propose the following interpretation :
Look, we both know that Dodge interiors have been garbage for years now, and we both know you, the shopper, merited better from a main line automaker. But we at Dodge / Chrysler refused to / couldn’t give it to you, and you’ve been unsatisfied by us for so very long that you do not expect better anymore. Boy, will you be stunned when you
see the new Durango’s interior, as we eventually got the memorandum on client satisfaction. It sounds ruthless, but the reality is colder and harder than a Caliber’s interior. There it is, in Dodge’s own press materials : a tacit admission the brand ( and company in total ) has been under-delivering for some time now. But there’s also hope when trying to finish. Because let’s be honest, it worked well for Dominoes. As you may have heard, the legendary pizza
provider recently launched a new, self-degrading advert campaign calling out its poor-quality pizza and
promising the purchaser that they’d get the better-tasting pizza they merited from here on out. Sound
familiar? Dodge, Dominoes, they even sound similar. Makes you ponder whether they employed the same PR advisor. Even if it was unintentional, could you blame Dodge for trying? In fact , Dominoes sales peaked after the new pizza and accompanying ad campaign launched. We, as clients, are fed so much selling foolishness in advertising these days that it’s really refreshing to hear a major firm admit their mistakes and speak simply about the reality of their products. Many food critics opined the new Dominoes pizza was only slightly better than the old stuff, nevertheless it didn’t hurt sales. The embarrassed ad vertisements and promises of redemption made an impression on consumers.
of course, it’s an extremely gigantic leap from a $10 pizza to a $30,000 SUV. Vehicles are the second largest single-item purchase a person or family makes after a place, and in this turbulent economic environment, nobody wants to spend needlessly on a bad product. With so much money at risk, will they really be ready to chance it on company that has not posted a reasonable profit in years and had to be bailed out by the U.S. Government twice? No one knows, but Dodge actually doesn’t have a choice here. Any person who’s so much as seen pictures of the old Durango’s interior and the new one will have an opinion on the changes especialy Nissan Service Specials Gainesville. Many of them won’t think highly of the old interior, and Dodge can’t hold it against them because it was actually 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 not unfamiliar
with the head-in-the-sand approach, but the new bosses seem to have woken their corporations up to the undeniable fact that it was not working. When it comes to automobiles, especially bad ones, consumers have a particularly long memory. They don’t forget simply because the automaker does not rap about it. And if you’re Dodge, what have you got to lose? Anyone turned off by this approach probably was not going to purchase a new Dodge anyway. Fact is, the new products are significantly better than the old ones, and the people behind them really trust in them. The Durango’s fraternal twin, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, has seen a massive jump in sales and for good cause : it’s immensely better than the old one for Episcopal School of Dallas. No one enjoys swallowing their pride,
but it’s often forceful medicine. In the final analysis, the self-defacing advert campaign only works if the fresh product is basically good, and in this case it is. Now,
Dodge and their Chrysler overlords just have to keep it up.
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