Marketer 2 marketer
- Click here to read the cover feature – a profile of Chevrolet’s UK managing director, Mark Terry
- Click here to read a Q+A with Mark Terry, managing director of Chevrolet UK and Wayne D Brannon, president and managing director of Chevrolet Europe
Peter Snelling, head of communications at Michelin, asks: How have you managed the transition from the Daewoo brand to the Chevrolet brand in Europe (GM rebranded Daewoo to Chevrolet in 2005) given that your cars are still manufactured in Korea?
Mark Terry (MT): If you look at the line-up five years ago and the line-up today, it’s a different company. Anyone who doesn’t know the car world would look at these two and not ever think they were from the same house. If we asked ten people in the street where the Captiva comes from, they’d say America. It has got the Chevrolet badge, it’s a four-wheel drive. In their minds it’s American, not Korean.
Nick Gibbens, digital marketing manager for shaving brand The Bluebeards Revenge, asks: How do you
see Chevrolet appealing to and reaching the UK male market, and are there plans to bring the Corvette into mainstream dealerships?
MT: The Corvette and Camaro are probably our “manliest” of products, but equally we have our ambitions with the Chevrolet Cruze and the British Touring Car Championship. Our driver Jason Plato won this year. Viewers of the BTCC, either trackside or on the television, are very male dominated, which therefore brings a sense that this is a male brand. This contrasts with our Spark or Aveo models, where a large majority of our customers are female.
We’re bringing Camaro to the UK via our dealerships as a mainstream product. Corvette is slightly different because these are £100,000-plus vehicles and it’s a very specialist market.
More importantly, the customer is not a mainstream Chevrolet customer. They probably drive a Porsche during the week and have fun in a Corvette ZR1 at the weekend.
Heather Bowler, global communications director at Eurosport, asks: Your recently launched Spark model was aimed at bringing the Chevrolet brand to a younger demographic. What challenges did you face in marketing to the more youthful buyer and did you integrate digital and social media for consumer insight?
MT: I personally faced a lot of challenges in so much as I don’t really understand Facebook and Twitter. The challenge for me was to embrace the new social media. I have to be taught by my experts here as to how we should approach it. It was a bit of a leap of faith. You’re a bit in the dark, but clearly it’s recognised by us as being the way forward and we’ll embrace it and be guided by the specialists.
