Missing the Mark

I don’t normally rant on this blog… not really my style. But I feel compelled to cry out against the marketing sins of Jim Norton Ford in Tulsa.

Ford is the only American motor vehicle company that posted growth last month. Ford did not take bail-out money and is taking its corporate marketing in a more social, relevant (in my opinion) direction.

(GM results) (Chrysler results) (Ford results)

But one of our local Tulsa Ford dealers… who is running a radio spot featuring a guy with a (bad) British accent. Huh? As the spot closes, the “Brit” says, “And remember, folks; we ain’t Norton (play on “nothin’ “) without you!”

Bloody hell… no self-respecting Brit would ever utter that phrase. EVER.

Sometimes I feel like we (marketers who blog) spend too much time preaching the basics, and then something like this bit of “marketing” comes along and I realize, anew, that the basics just aren’t that basic.

What happened to knowing your market? Knowing what motivates them? Knowing why they buy, and more specifically, why they might buy from you? How did “let’s just use some guy with a British accent!” become the answer to why people in Tulsa, Oklahoma would choose a Ford?

I do not know if an agency was paid to produce this, but I hope not. And please, don’t tell me how it worked because I remember it… I remember and write about really good and really bad marketing because it’s what I do for a living, not because being bad is a strategy worth emulating.

So what do you think? What are your favorite examples of marketing that misses the mark?

(Photo credit: malavoda on Flikr)