Comments on: Acura’s bid for a resonant brand

By: Brian Phipps

Brian Phipps — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 16:15:24 +0000

If Accura really wanted its MDX brand to resonate with customers it should have dropped an energy efficient and clean (bio)diesel under the hood. Brands are deeds, not words.

By: Seamus McCauley

Seamus McCauley — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:42:22 +0000

“Both collectivities and individuals looked forward with pleasure and anticipation. (I think the only place on the planet that still entertains this concept of time is China”

Seen the Long Now project? http://www.longnow.org

Perhaps more a confirmation of your point than a refutation that this singular attempt to look at the future positively and hyperopically should currently appear so contrarian. And amusing that what they’re doing is ultimately culturally retrograde. Still…if you haven’t already seen it, worth a look.

By: steve

steve — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:26:44 +0000

But is the Acura really technologically superior, even if it doesn’t draw head=turns with its aesthetics? That seems to be a key question for this campaign.

I don’t agree that a modern auto brand needs to resonate with the deep general meanings of the culture. It’s all about niches now, and there are plenty of people who are disgusted with the anti-tech hand-wringing pieties now regnant (ever since I can remember with a brief hiatus in the late 1990s).

I thought we were living in a time of plentitude and flux, with streams and cross-currents and eddies of meaning in our ultra-complex culture–at least I thought that was what Grant was successfully persuading me to believe. So everything can’t be tailored to the New York Times/PBS/NPR/New Yorker view of the world. Aren’t there enough afluent, optimistic, pro-tech pragmatists to support an SUV brand?

By: p|n

p|n — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:00:03 +0000

I love your blog Mr. McCracken. I stumbled on it some months ago and find it a joy to read each day. I work for a company that is struggling with the same problem or relevance. We are working on a product that our CEO believes will be a panacea for the consumer. The rest of us see the design as sub par and somewhat behind the times. The technology itself is novel, but provides little real world benefit. In a marketplace flooded with appropriate alternatives, I fear I am in a similar spot to the Acura Ad Manager. I will be asked to create a campaign for a product that has little resonance with the culture it is trying to penetrate. Poor management decisions have crippled our ability to build the best product. And now it’s going to be dumped in my lap. Wish me luck; I’ll let you know how it goes.