Rallying to drive revitalised Mitsubishi

RALLYING and the slogan "Engineered to Excite" are the two critical elements Mitsubishi Motors Australia will use as it attempts to resurrect its brand image over the next 18 months.

The embattled manufacturer’s new advertising house, Clemenger BBDO, created the themes after research it conducted found car consumers favoured brands which exuded "sportiness, prestige and fun to drive" – and that Mitsubishi was viewed as "functional, Japanese and old".

According to Clemenger BBDO's strategic planning director, Mike Daniels, Mitsubishi’s engineering expertise and motorsport success will be used to make the brand more credible and desirable, and to move it from the mainstream closer to Euro-built and more individualistic marques.

"There are two principal barriers which stand in the way of putting the Mitsubishi brand in this particular position," Mr Daniels said.

"The first of those barriers is, we think, a barrier of credibility. What we need to do is to be injecting greater automotive credentials into the brand, at least in terms of people’s perceptions.

"The second issue, fundamentally, is of desirability. We need to make the Mitsubishi brand highly desirable. We have to generate belief and we have to generate desire as well." Used to little or no effect to date, Mitsubishi’s World Rally Championship and Paris-Dakar achievements are now considered key marketing advantages over other manufacturers.

"The engineering innovation within Mitsubishi rally cars helps us to build the functional side of the brand – the credibility – and it is the excitement and winning within the Mitsubishi rally cars that helps us build the emotional side of the brand, the desirability," Mr Daniels said.

He also stressed that it should appeal to men and women who were uninterested in the sport.

"What we found was that you didn’t have to be passionate about rallying to respond to what rallying meant. You just needed to get the (message) that being good at rallying meant that you made good, tough cars that were unbreakable, durable and had high performance," he said.

Mitsubishi Australia boss Tom Phillips said a separate advertising program would be devised that focuses on the fact Mitsubishi was not a basket case, not a welfare recipient and not a short-term presence Down Under.

"We’ve got to obviously put a lot of focus on changing the image and we’ve got to get this concept, or idea, out of the market that we’re, firstly, lame ducks, that secondly we’re dependent only on government support, which is bullshit – please quote me (on that) – and thirdly, that we’re only here for a short time," he said.