Kristian Aquilina

GM HOLDEN is launching the first model in “a very robust plan” of marketing aimed at overcoming what its new chairman and managing director Dave Buttner admitted was poor market awareness of the brand’s products.

The plan includes exposing potential buyers to test drives of pre-production cars well before the Acadia goes on sale in mid-November. Dealers have told GoAutoNews Premium that they are already seeing increased traffic in showrooms as a result of the initiative.

The marketing drive is being led by former Holden NZ managing director and now Holden’s director of marketing for Australia and NZ, Kristian Aquilina, who believes there is still loyalty to the Holden brand that can be uncovered.

“Our awareness and consideration campaign will help in reigniting people who love the brand,” he told GoAutoNews Premium.

“We have to inspire people to the brand. We are confident that the priorities (of re-establishing connection with buyers) are at the heart of what we are going to be doing over the coming months.

“People will see our marketing strategy roll out over the coming months. Acadia is chapter one of a very robust plan.”

New techniques are being used to attract people back to the brand and a new series of advertising is being launched, starting with the Acadia this week on digital channels and – when the new SUV is close to launch next month – to television channels.

“We used pre-production cars before the launch of Acadia,” he said.

“That was the first time we have done that. It is something we could do in the future because the response from the dealers was excellent.”

That program was triggered by the timing of the Acadia’s launch and its arrival in showrooms just prior to Christmas which is regarded as a time when potential buyers may be distracted by the holiday season.

“The decision (to expose buyers to pre-production cars) was based mainly on the timing,” he said.
“If we let production schedule determine the launch, then the cars would have arrived in mid-November.

“Trying to launch a vehicle then and telling customers about the vehicle is just hard work. It’s not a great time to launch a car.

“So we had to look at unnatural ways to try and start that process earlier. In addition, we have a new nameplate to launch and few people had heard of Acadia before.

“So we had to get awareness to Acadia before the car’s arrival in showrooms.”

Mr Aquilina said the Acadia pre-launch was one of the “out of the box” initiatives considered to attract attention.

“This was designed to pre-load the market awareness and get the dealers talking to their loyal customers about the exclusivity of driving the cars before they officially arrive,” he said.

“I guess the experiment is working quite well. It could be something we could use next launch.”

The pre-launch involved dealers getting one of the 180 early production Acadias from the US factory and then the dealers were involved in a campaign to get their customers to drive the new car.

“There have been a significant number of inquiries as a result of the 180 pre-launch cars available in dealerships around the country ahead of the normal production,” Mr Aquilina said.

“All those who had waited since the pre-launch campaign and media activity have now got into those cars and have driven them. Some of those attracted deposits so that was exciting.”

Holden Acadia

He said that the type of Acadia customers are those chasing an SUV “so it’s a broad brush”.

“At the launch we said that the LTZ-V (flagship) would be our Caprice replacement and that has already attracted a certain buyer, so it’s working on that level as well,” he said.

“We have yet to see the data about what new buyers are coming out of. The Caprice theory was brought to us by some dealers who rang us and said ‘hey, it actually happened’ as some luxury-car owners swapped into the Acadia.

“The feature tech and comfort levels are better than the Caprice. It was bound to happen and we have seen a similar trend in the US with the new Cadillac XT5 SUV taking a lot of people from the CTS sedan.”

Mr Aquilina said there are some unique challenges in Australia compared with New Zealand.

“We can’t ignore those challenges in Australia and we know that with a good solid plan and an integrated approach with all the departments in Holden that there are fantastic opportunities for Holden in Australia,” he said.

“We have multiple important cars in our line-up. All the ‘children’ in our family are there for a reason and an important role to play in the Holden story.

“Acadia is the newest addition to our family. It’s not everyday you have a new nameplate and when you are dealing with a very cluttered environment, you have to stand out from the crowd.

“If you look at the amount of marketing required when you have a new nameplate to establish and you want to do an absolutely perfect job, it needs a great deal of thought and strategy.”

Part of that strategy was customer feedback that was used to position the vehicle in the market. The US-made Acadia will take the place of the smaller South Korean-made Captiva 7, that also has seven seats.

“Over the years we have used focus groups for advertising and marketing,” Mr Aquilina said.

“The response to this car has been very positive from a product standpoint and as a promotion and it is reassuring that we have already made Acadia sales before the official launch.

“It is interesting that Acadia hasn’t had broad-based exposure other than in the motoring news.

“It shows we have loyal Holden customers who remain very interested in what we are doing and it also shows the role of social media in a car launch.

“We had absolute faith that the Holden engineers would be able to produce a car to meet Australian driver needs.

“All we needed, from a marketing perspective, was to tell people about the car.”

The ad is now on digital media on the Holden website. Holden said it has had more than 50,000 views to date.

By Neil Dowling