What’s the best selling car in America? Not a Honda or Toyota. Or even a good, solid Ford. Nope, it’s the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. With its energetic styling, youthful target market, and extreme fuel efficiency (zero gallons per mil) it’s practically a perfect ride. So, it also shouldn’t surprise us that when they made one for grown-ups it would become popular too. At least in principle.
The Smart Car is cute. Super cute. Too cute maybe for some grown-ups, but those of us with arrested development like to put a lot of cute around us, so it’s working for lots of people. It’s crazy fuel efficient and smart in many ways other than fuel: turning radius, super cool parking ability (can park head-first in parallel spaces, but you still get a ticket if you do it), safety for size, interior detailing, etc. In fact, “smart” is derived from Swatch, Mercedes and Art, with Swatch as the initial originator of the concept. Therein lies the problem: I thought is was an alternative fuel, electric, or at least a hybrid vehicle! As in zero gallons per mile or close to it! Nope. It’s just a ridiculously tight and tiny regular car. Crap. I thought that’s what would be smart about it. Makes me feel kind dumb. I’m hanging my head in shame as I write this. But should I? What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Product Communication is what the product says about its performance via design and aesthetic elements. The Swatch-inspired styling of this car overlaps heavily with design cues that communicate alternative fuel vehicles, such as Brazil’s Obvio, a car that can burn just about anything but cigarettes: gas, ethanol, or even compressed natural gas. Upon closer inspection, the Smart Car isn’t really much smarter than the average VW. They get about the same mileage as the Jetta TDI Diesel that holds twice as many people. Okay Smart Car, who’s your Daddy?
The Data:
The Smart Car entered the HotHouse with strong awareness. More than 60% have heard of it. The trial is very low, but interest extremely high netting average Conversion potential over time. The consume and produce indices are high, but there isn’t a lot of sharing going on. Perhaps leveraging web communities could bolster this. The success index overall is positive, so I would expect it to do well.
The Smart Car is cute. Super cute. Too cute maybe for some grown-ups, but those of us with arrested development like to put a lot of cute around us, so it’s working for lots of people. It’s crazy fuel efficient and smart in many ways other than fuel: turning radius, super cool parking ability (can park head-first in parallel spaces, but you still get a ticket if you do it), safety for size, interior detailing, etc. In fact, “smart” is derived from Swatch, Mercedes and Art, with Swatch as the initial originator of the concept. Therein lies the problem: I thought is was an alternative fuel, electric, or at least a hybrid vehicle! As in zero gallons per mile or close to it! Nope. It’s just a ridiculously tight and tiny regular car. Crap. I thought that’s what would be smart about it. Makes me feel kind dumb. I’m hanging my head in shame as I write this. But should I? What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Product Communication is what the product says about its performance via design and aesthetic elements. The Swatch-inspired styling of this car overlaps heavily with design cues that communicate alternative fuel vehicles, such as Brazil’s Obvio, a car that can burn just about anything but cigarettes: gas, ethanol, or even compressed natural gas. Upon closer inspection, the Smart Car isn’t really much smarter than the average VW. They get about the same mileage as the Jetta TDI Diesel that holds twice as many people. Okay Smart Car, who’s your Daddy?
The Data:
The Smart Car entered the HotHouse with strong awareness. More than 60% have heard of it. The trial is very low, but interest extremely high netting average Conversion potential over time. The consume and produce indices are high, but there isn’t a lot of sharing going on. Perhaps leveraging web communities could bolster this. The success index overall is positive, so I would expect it to do well.
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