When was the last time you saw a Rolls-Royce ad on the internet (YouTube, Twitter, website ads..), leave alone TV?
Do you know where Rolls-Royce sells its cars?
Obviously I don’t mean the dealerships, but how do they do their promotion for their latest models?
Funny enough, I hear they’re not at the polos, or Grammys (common choices you might think of). Not all those flashy red carpet movie premiers or shows, either.
Airshows.
Boeing showing their latest plane (the Boeing 777X, in 2025)?
Gulfstream Aerospace showing their latest private jet (the Gulfstream G800)?
Right next door is Rolls-Royce. That’s where you’ll find them.
Aston Martin?
How do they market their product?
James Bond.
James Bond, the character, works for Aston Martin - to show the way an Aston Martin drives. You know, a suit guy, undercover agent, always wears solid colours : not loud or ostentatious. Gets all the girls🌚. It communicates something/someone different.
Lamborghini?
How does Lamborghini reach their consumer? Where does Lamborghini reach their market?
Ferrari is in Formula 1. McLaren is on Formula 1. Not Lambo.
Lamborghini doesn’t do events. It has Lamborghini events. And for you to be invited to the event, you’re not even invited to the event. A Lamborghini owner has to recommend you. They do not run ads on Twitter or promote stuff, they know that a Lamborghini owner will recommend the next buyer or someone who already owns a Lambo. Somebody in, invites you in. They don’t care how much money you have - you might be on the latest cover of Forbes, but if you don’t have an invitation from someone in the circle, you’re not coming in. (Talk about knowing the right people, or in more familiar terms, ‘connection’😅) They possess exclusivity for the brand; denying people the ability to get in. They have you waiting on a long queue of ‘rich’ people who want to buy a Lambo but don’t know someone in.
Now, I’m obviously not a car guy. The only car I know best is the Mazda CX5 that everybody is having nowadays🙄. That one I’ve come to know more of it coz of how I’ve seen it so many times, I had to dig deeper.
For the details above of how world-class supercars market their products - a class I had this week on business marketing had me thinking to a few months ago before I started this newsletter, when I came across Vusi Thembekwayo’s short masterclass video on how to market your product. And he explains it so well than I’ve done. I’ve mostly rewritten his exact words.
But the point is not all about the brand, but how they do their things. What makes a brand? What qualifies your product to be now regarded as a brand? Obviously these car companies too didn’t start as brands, they had to build their clients’ trusts, and now are famous worldwide brands.
Their marketing strategies intrigued me to think of how each car has its specific audience. Vusi even commented that you would hardly find a McLaren in a hip-hop music video, coz obviously hip-hop wannabes can’t afford it, but also coz the average age for those who own McLarens is around 43years.
Rolls-Royce have known their audience to be people who are on the waiting e-mail list for the next private jet.
Lamborghini invites you, not you inviting yourself, to their event, knowing you are a serious potential buyer.
Don’t know where I’m going with this, but I thought I’d share this, mostly for car fanatics out there who probably already knew this (or not😅).
There’s a post I once saw, that some car company doesn’t advertise on TV, coz their audience is not sitting around watching TV.
Goes back to the point, what is your audience?
I’m personally still figuring out what the audience of this newsletter is.
But do you think you’ll one day be part of the target audience of a brand’s new supercar? Let me know in the <reply> section of this email😁. Thank you.
Have a wonderful week ahead!
✍🏽Reagan.