How do you breathe new life into a 116-year-old automotive brand?
This is the challenge facing the marketing team at Cadillac USA, who are using content to drive the iconic American manufacturer to the top of the industry.
Brand recognition isn’t a problem for Cadillac: after all, just about everyone recognizes the company’s name as something intrinsically linked with the heyday of America’s automotive history. It’s ingrained in popular culture and has become something we’re used to seeing in movies and hearing in song lyrics.
But despite these positive associations, Cadillac has struggled with relevancy in recent decades — an issue that’s spurred the entire company to reinvent itself in a bid to return to the top of the industry. What began with a nimble and innovative new product line has extended to the company’s marketing efforts, where Cadillac is helping people see the brand in a new light.
“This is not the Cadillac that you think you know,” Renée Rauchut, Director of Marketing at Cadillac USA, told us. “This is not your dad’s Cadillac, but Cadillac as something that is a different choice.”
This line of thought has led the company to develop its “Dare Greatly” campaign, which succinctly captures what’s at the very heart of the brand. It’s a simple distillation of a complex message, and content has been a key part of publicizing this message to encourage a whole new generation of drivers to fall in love with Cadillac’s vehicles.
So, how do you use content to help change perception of your brand? We spoke to Rauchut to find out a little more about Cadillac’s marketing and content strategies.
Pressboard: Can you tell us a bit about how you’ve been reinventing the brand and the challenges this has involved?
Renée Rauchut: We have a unique problem in that we are literally aging out of our customers. There’s a false familiarity with the brand. Everybody loves the brand, but our relevancy really dipped. So, we have a very deliberate 10-year plan that we kicked off in 2014, which initially was just intended to make some noise and disrupt the market. It was really to just establish our name out in the world again with a new lens. We’re proud of our products. We really want to make sure people are aware that we are quick, nimble and fun to drive, and that we have an amazing portfolio that’s not this big, floating boat on wheels.
Having a really honest approach will give you credibility. That is our kicking-off point. It inspires our agencies and our creatives to do their best work and come back with amazing creative.
How do you go about trying to reach a younger audience?
We’re in this space where Gen X think of Cadillac as something their parents would own. We don’t have that stigma within Gen Y. They almost think of Cadillac as a new brand. Cadillac is iconic to them because of our heritage, because of the logo. We want to introduce ourselves and our products through meaningful content to this audience. It comes down to the product. We know that our consumers of all age ranges are savvy. We know that people are constantly being sold to, and we want to make sure that we don’t have the tone of a typical salesman in our communications. This is where content plays a role, especially with a younger audience. As a young Gen X consumer, I don’t want somebody to wave a price tag at me or try to sell me something — especially within luxury, it makes it feel cheap and inauthentic. We hope to change things by speaking to our audience on their terms, with relevant content that they would seek to consume anyway.
That same thinking is evident in your “Dare Greatly” campaign, which is a good example of how you’ve distilled your brand values into the kind of storytelling you wouldn’t normally expect from an automotive company.
Part of resurrecting our brand relevancy and bringing us back to the height of our success is reminding people what they fell in love with in the first place. There’s almost this sense of wonder and magic with Cadillac, and projects like “Dare Greatly” are able to re-engage that magic and enthusiasm.
“Dare Greatly” has become our platform, our overarching guiding light. It’s also our tagline. Now when it comes to [the campaign], we’d like to think of it as an umbrella [concept] of how we dare greatly as a company and we acknowledge others who have dared greatly. Sometimes it’s product-centered and sometimes it’s not. It really depends on what we’re looking to communicate and the goal. Being an American brand, the spirit of what it means to be an American and being seen as a symbol of the modern American dream is important to us.
As a young Gen X consumer, I don’t want somebody to wave a price tag at me or try to sell me something […] We hope to change things by speaking to our audience on their terms, with relevant content that they would seek to consume anyway.
Speaking more about content, what have you found success with? What are some of the formats that you really like to play with?
It depends on the opportunity and what we’re trying to communicate. We use editorial opportunities, media partnerships, experiential, digital and social, as well as more traditional forms of advertising to market our products. One project that I’m particularly proud of is a partnership with Interview Magazine. It was based on our [2018 XT5 Crossover] rear camera mirror, which is a unique technology that we brought to market first. We created an installation that went to Marfa Film Festival and debuted the piece there on the ground. It was unique because it wasn’t something beautiful that you would just walk up to and look at. It was interactive and playful. It became an easy, quick and simple way to understand the technology and the product. With a large-scale campaign like that, and with all the different types of content that go into it, how do you make sure everything is cohesive?
It’s a massive undertaking with a million moving pieces. We have incredible partners and we’re strict about status documents and some of the lesser, seemingly more boring things that help to keep things on track. Above all we work together closely — overcommunication is key.
Cadillac USA’s partnership with Interview Magazine.
So, what is your best tip for other marketers hoping to create great content?
Stay honest. You can have a fabulous story to tell, but unless you have the right narrative, it will fall flat. There’s a different kind of scrutiny placed on content, so having a really honest approach will give you credibility. That is our kicking-off point. It inspires our agencies and our creatives to do their best work and come back with amazing creative. Don’t be afraid. I know that sounds a bit cliché, but don’t be scared to push boundaries. Stay current. Stay in the loop of what’s going on around you and in the world. Follow your gut. Don’t be afraid to try. You may have a couple of things that don’t work out as fabulously as you had envisioned them. Follow through with small scale passion projects, and be confident to push large scale initiatives with the same enthusiasm and passion.
(Disclaimer: this content was originally published in the Science of Storytelling Issue 4: Automotive)
Photos courtesy Cadillac USA