How Buick Did So Well in China

Nowadays, not so much. If you look at recent sales figures for these brands, as compared with their sales in the 1980s, for instance, you’ll see the numbers have gone into a free-fall. Perhaps buyers have wised up to the fact that a Pontiac or a Buick is really just a Chevy under the skin, or that a Mercury is just a Ford with the Gillette-razor grille replaced with a  waterfall-styled one.

But these brands need not be consigned to the dustbin of history (e.g., Oldsmobile)—they may just need to spread their wings a bit. In fact, let them fly off to another corner of the globe, where nobody knows their name, and good things may start to happen.

In fact, this already has happened with GM’s almost-but-not-quite-a-Cadillac brand, Buick. Sales have been dwindling in North America, but guess where Buick vehicles have gained quite a following? That’s right, China.

The Middle Kingdom didn’t know that in North America, Buicks were considered stodgy and boring. So GM was able to market Buicks as something new and different to the fledgling Chinese car market, and lo and behold, Chinese car buyers started snapping up LaCrosses and Lucernes. In fact, Buick even resurrected an old name—Electra—to use on a rebadged Holden Commodore, which is only sold in the People’s Republic.

This relaunching of a moribund brand elsewhere is an example of what columnist David Wolf calls “glocal” marketing, instead of “global.” GM did “glocal” marketing almost by accident in Australia some 77 years ago. They purchased a local automotive company, Holden—but instead of changing the name on the door to one of their existing brands, such as Chevrolet, Pontiac, or Buick, they let Holden be Holden. GM is still holding firm in the Australian market, placing its brand number two behind Toyota.

In this spirit, perhaps it’s time to make large corporations stop thinking that they should unleash all of their brands in some sort of global blitz—let’s sell them worldwide—and instead think about adapting certain brands to certain markets, where they may do better. (If Buick worked so well for GM in China, maybe Mercury could take off in Russia, for instance.) Or, if a multinational company buys a local brand, hang on to the local brand, instead of forcing the global brand upon the local populace.

In the end, doing “glocal” marketing is an approach that makes sense. A company may think that by selling its products globally, it will save money—but if the product flops in some areas, and takes off in others, the company has lost sales in Flopville. Better to rebrand a product, or change the product for local tastes, so that the company’s overall customer base increases, even if the corporation has to spend a little more to do so. It’s an investment well-worth paying for.

via Seeking Alpha