Acura Bid For Top Luxury Tier Hangs On New MDX Campaign

Acura wants to elevate itself to the first tier of luxury brands, and so the Honda-owned marque is betting its biggest-ever marketing campaign on its most important vehicle in the effort.
The question remains whether the much-coveted remainder of Generation Y that has financial wherewithal will be drawn in by the initial stages of a campaign meant to get them to respond emotionally to a brand that may not yet have the practical bona fides in the category to pull off such an indirect appeal.

In any event, Acura has unveiled a new multi-channel advertising initiative for the 2014 MDX sport-utility vehicle which brand stewards said will be its most expensive effort ever, comprising more than double its estimated spending of $39 million last year on a campaign for its new RDX SUV.

Gary Robinson, manager of Acura national advertising and the brand, told  journalists the push will be “the biggest launch in Acura history in terms of scope and dollars.”
Acura year-to-date sales through May were ahead of 2012 by 10 percent, and the brand has been overhauling its lineup and its marketing for the last couple of years.

But Acura has remained outside the top tier of U.S. luxury marques consisting of the Germans and Lexus , and Honda wants to change that proposition for the short and long term, starting with this campaign for the vehicle that often has been its volume-leading nameplate.
More than the unprecedented dollar outlay alone, Robinson believes that Acura also is finally taking the right tack in terms of positioning the brand. “We stumbled on to identifying a really interesting niche within luxury that we believe is untapped: a new generation of very technology-oriented kind of doers out there that are quietly out there changing the world,” he said.

“They have a lot of money but they aren’t interested in the traditional trappings of luxury. [They're a] new kind of young, affluent class that is interested in the finer things in life but not for the sake of showing off, but looking for things that are highly functional and highly part of their lives.”
To that end, Acura’s new campaign takes an oblique approach to promoting the new MDX that it calls “Made for Mankind.” Seeking to highlight the “synergy between man and machine,” the first 60-second TV spot in the campaign, “Human Race,” features dreamlike images of people scuba-diving in underwater caves, scrambling up large trees, dancing, teaching movements to a robot and gazing at starlight. The ad consumes 40 seconds before it even shows an MDX.

“Man is a determined creature,” the voiceover says. “No matter the circumstance, opposition or even understanding, there is an inherent calling to seek, push, improve, transcend. It’s a perpetual process, a necessity of the human spirit, that inspired our own evolution. Because if your quest is to build the world’s smartest luxury SUV for mankind, you must hold yourself to the standard of mankind.” It ends by calling the vehicle the “extremely new 2014 MDX.”
Whether an approach flattering the associational capabilities of the target market sells the new MDX remains to be seen. In other “video concepts” that are central to the campaign, Acura gets more practical. “Re-Invention” depicts how the MDX has been completely rethought and improved to the point that the only remaining component of the previous-generation model is a small metal bracket.
And “Choose” focuses on the 2014 MDX’s all-new system that offers “sport” and “comfort” driving modes in addition to normal, adjusting steering effort, throttle response and other aspects of the ride and environment to suite the tastes of the driver.
In any event, it’s the first campaign produced by Mullen, Acura’s new agency, and actually stemmed directly from the pitch that Mullen made to land the account in March from incumbent RPA.
The campaign “gets less of the intellectual part going, which is well known and accepted with this target, and actually makes them start to feel something,” Peter Rosch, Mullen’s executive creative director, told journalists. “It’s a little bit of [creating] a gut feeling that I want to get myself into that car.”

But as abstract as the first ad is, Robinson and Rosch promised that the campaign also will highlight the practical manifestations of the new mood in the MDX, such as a design shift from 41 buttons for the infotainment controls down to just nine, with a touchscreen. “The direction is simplicity and ease of use,” Robinson said. “While there are lots of people doing different things with touchscreens, we think ours works well and is intuitive.”

Source: Forbes