A Toyota Land Cruiser on the road in Moab, USA. Unsplash.

Cultural codes around cars

Reinvention

Client: Japanese car company

(worked as a consultant with Japan Creative Insights)

Determine how to establish, differentiate, and activate the client’s brand in relation to culture, customers, and competition.

Vehicles for sale at an AutoNation Honda dealership in Fremont, California. Getty Images.

The Challenge

While the client’s reliable, high quality cars at competitive prices differentiated the brand for decades, improvements in vehicle design and paradigm shifting technologies have increased competition.

The client wanted to reorient its brand around providing unique value to its customers (specifically North Americans). This required qualitative research to: 

  • decipher customer expectations

  • deep dive into their American customers’ values, attitudes, beliefs, aspirations, lives around the car

  • interpret gain enhancers and pain relievers provided by the client and competitor brands

Methods

In-depth interviews with car owners (both client and competitor brands) across consumer segments, in multiple locations in the U.S. were conducted.

Data was analysed using codes that captured the consumers’ voice, emotions, motivations, values, attitudes, beliefs, judgments, identities, priorities, experiences around the car and world views.

Identifying unique value.

An insights report that included value maps, brand experience maps and a comparative analysis of value propositions of competitor brands identified unique value for each consumer segment.

Examining specific features, characteristics, value to customer, and comparative benefits of each brand, the user experience and unique value provided by each car brand was decoded. This helped situate the client in the competitive landscape and provoke conversations around where the brand might want to be.

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