Launching an icon

Hello! everyone,

Hope your holidays are going well... a few days back, I read this article and found some concepts that we have discussed in our lectures so far, so I thought why shouldn't I share this article with you..so here it is...

ALTIS Cruisetronic | be an icon |
(By Shariq Haroon)

As few months back Toyota launched the new Toyota Corolla Altis Cruisetronic in Pakistan. I believe that you must have seen it in your vicinity or in adverts by now. Launching a new car in Pakistan; where sales of new cars have been dropped by 50% over the last year is indeed, a risky proposition. But the new Corolla Altis Cruisetronic has raised a few eyebrows.

Its launch is done with great deal of hype. The whole campaign was comprised to promote the car superior, in terms of satisfying customer wants and demands better than competitors, in their words “an icon”.

“The idea behind the campaign was to attract the mobile 25-35 age segment” says Munawar Ahmed, Account Director Manhattan International Limited (MIL). He further explained that the focus of the campaign was to push the idea of “be an icon”, but the lack of an icon promoting the car was a change for a market, because everything in our market form cooking oil to real estate projects are sold with the support of celebrities. Ahmed clarified that the people involved in the campaign, soon realized that “there was no celebrity that could match this car, the car itself is so strong.” This confidence was based on the new exciting features of Altis Cruisetronic which are cruise control, switchtronic, electronic power steering, leather interior and sunroof (the ad above highlights these features). The advertising was equally distributed among the print and electronic media.

But despite of all this, the question is still to be answered that whether the idea “be an icon” and the new features will inspire the target segment to buy the car, because Altis Cruisetronic costs 1.7 million rupees; whereas its recently launched models Xli , Gli and 2.0D cost lower than this. Some dealers say that a large number of buyers key is the shape of the car. Therefore they will buy Xli ,Gli and 2.0D to satisfy their needs associated to Corolla brand name.

But Ahmed disagrees saying, “The person who wants to buy Altis Cruisetronic will not buy a Xli ,Gli or 2.0D. He will stay within his category; his budget is also set accordingly, while the Xli and Gli customers with 1.2 to 1.3 million rupees budget will stay within in that category. Ahmed adds more, that because luxury cars have become expensive, therefore customers who want to buy luxury cars and are unable to do so anymore, and that is where Altis Cruisetronic comes in by offering them the features of a luxury car at a much lower price.

Ahmed admits that there would be some effect with the launch of Xli ,Gli and 2.0D, but “the effect will not be so great”. At the end Ahmed confidently says that “Whosoever wants to buy the best of the best will buy the Altis Cruisetronic. The remaining will buy Xli, Gli or 2.0D but will still fall into the corolla category.”

Concepts in the article that we’ve studied in class:

• Marketing Concept
  
• Market Targeting
• Market offering
• Marketing Mix
• Microenvironment
• Market Positioning