fame

[Pottree@domain.elided]

In a message dated 6/14/2002 12:41:42 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:


>   From the 
> perspective I have now, I can't imagine how anything but price would have 
> persuaded someone to choose the Capri over the GTV, but I don't know what 
> Alfa's reputation was in the USA in 1974.  I wish I'd been more aware of 
> Alfa in 1979 (I was all of 19) when I bought that Capri!

Famous adman David Ogilvy once cooked up a promo ad (or took credit for it) 
for McGraw-Hill magazines..  It featured a photo of a gruff looking man in a 
suit, arms folded, sitting in an office chair, scowling straight at the 
viewer.  The copy read something like:

"I don't know who you are.
I don't know your company.
I don't know your company's product.
I don't know what your company stands for.
I don't know your company's customers.
I don't know your company's record.
I don't know your company's reputation.

Now - what was it you wanted to sell me?"

Alas, this has been Alfa's story in the USA.  Either they didn't believe that 
you have to toot your own horn here, and very often, and very LOUDLY... or 
they just could never afford to play with the big boys who could.  Maybe it 
was a little of each, and maybe it was something else altogether.

I have always loved Alfas, but I can't say I recall much US advertising on 
their part, or any that had any impact (and some that was downright 
embarrassing)... but I do recall a big campaign at the time (early 70s), 
which included in part billboards seemingly everywhere (or, everywhere I was 
in the NE of the USA) promoting the "First sexy European under $2500 - the 
FORD Capri."  It could be a trick of memory, but this was not a flash in the 
pan, this campaign ran a long time (perhaps years).  And they had dealers.  
And they included PRICE, SEX, the USP (Unique Selling Proposition of a cool 
Euro car on the cheap, within YOUR reach), and a good idea of where to get it 
and have it fixed, at your ubiquitous Ford dealer.

I don't know how many units they sold but I bet they beat Alfa cold, plus got 
young floor traffic happening in the Ford stores.

One of these things lives down the block from me now, and it is still 
butt-ugly.   Only a real square from Detroit could imagine it as sexy, but 
THEY have the money for the media buy!  And the advertising, while not 
astonishing, was absolutely first rate - not breakthrough brilliant like the 
original US VW work, but
really professional from a TOP SHOP that was working for a TOP CLIENT (Ford). 
 

Going to a shop in Texas without car experience, producing a spot that showed 
dropping a Milano off a crane until it smashed to pieces, and then running it 
four times at two in the morning in the hinterlands, does not, to me, even 
begin to count.  They should have kept the money they wasted and bought one 
or two nice cases of Borollo and called it a day.

It was, clearly, the BUYER (Alfa) in that case that was foolish.

Caveat emptor.

Charlie
LA, CA, USA
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