Hokey religions and ancient weapons (was RE: fame)

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

--- George Hovis <ghovis@domain.elided> wrote:
> [..]  as if the company's position
> was:  We don't understand you (US market). Why don't
> you get it?...

What timing.  On Saturday I replaced the front brake
pads in the Berlina (more later).  I was puttering
around the neighborhood, driving slowly to bed the
pads in, and I had an Alfa Insight.

Most U.S. car buyers perceive different makes of cars
as Brands -- consumer goods largely interchangeable on
their own merits or characteristics, but with names
that have some association due almost entirely to
advertising and marketing.  (Can anyone here describe
the difference in flavor between Coor's Light and
Miller Lite beer?)  

Those of us who were seduced by European sports cars
at some time before about 1975 almost universally
learned to refer to certain Brands as Marques, a
British term (since so many of us got our start by
making our obeisances to the Great God Mowog), which
basically means "brand" but which has a cachet of
gentility about it, an air of stately country homes
and the playing fields of Eton, that the homegrown
variety simply can't match.

Some of us take that one step further, and consider
certain marques to be Les Grands Marques -- on the
marvelously American assumption that if the British
are better than us in some regard because they're from
another country, then the French must be better still
because they are not only from another country but
even speak another language.  Les Grands Marques, as
the term is (or was) commonly perceived, referred to
automobiles that have had significant and continued
success in international motorsport -- certainly
including such grands marques as Bugatti, Alfa-Romeo,
Bentley, Ferrari, Mercedes, Maserati, and probably
others depending on the era in which one became
fixated with the whole idea.  In any case, a Grand
Marque signified a maker whose cars' performance in
international competition put them a cut above the
rest.

And while I have always included Alfa-Romeo as a Grand
Marque (with lots of objective, historical reasons for
this, of course), the Alfa Insight I had last Saturday
changed my mind slightly, and pertains directly to the
question of how Alfa was perceived in the U.S. (to the
extent that it WAS perceived in the U.S., at least).

Which is that while Chevy is a Brand, M.G. is a
Marque, and Ferrari is a Grand Marque -- 

Alfa is a Secret Society.  Far too exotic to be an
ordinary Brand, possessing more than enough
credentials to be a Grand Marque (the first World
Championship in 1925, winning the new Formula 1 series
in 1951-51, four consecutive Le Mans victories from
1931-34, etc. etc. etc.), Alfa was both something more
and less.  Alfas in the U.S. never (or seldom) had the
performance of Ferrari, the exclusivity of Maserati,
the bank-vault solidity of Mercedes -- or at least
U.S. Alfas lacked the *perception* of these
characteristics by the U.S. public at large.  Those of
us who knew, knew; those who didn't, didn't.  And most
of us who knew the handshake have been content with
that, because belonging to a Secret Society was
ever-so-much cooler than simply owning a weird Italian
car that nobody else particularly cared about.  

I'm not sure what significance, if any, this has for
the marque's, er, brand's future in the U.S. market. 
GM certainly understands how to use marketing to
generate brand loyalty better than probably anyone in
the world, and in recent years has hinted at an
ability (or at least given a nod to the need) to
provide some unique content underneath the generic
Miller-Liteness of their products.  Everything I read
about new Alfas as sporting automobiles suggests that
they have a lot of the dynamic driving behaviors that
I enjoy in a car.  

But it's going to be tough for me, as a 24th-degree
Poobah of the Secret Society of the Cross and Serpent
(or whatever rank I've achieved in my years of
servitude to the Cause), to get over the fact that the
cars that eventually come to the U.S. (if they do) in
two years, or four, or whenever, will bear the
insignia of that Secret Society and all the
assumptions, judgments, evaluations and
characterizations that go along with it.  And
separating those cars from those assumptions,
judgments, evaluations and characterizations will be a
difficult task, no matter how good the cars themselves
may end up being.

So the question is: will it be harder for those of us
who LIKE the cars to step outside of our expectations,
evaluations, and assumptions and evaluate the cars on
their own merits, or will it be harder for those who
don't already belong to our Secret Society?

Either way, I agree with Charlie's fundamental
assumption: they aren't going to woo people away from
BMWs or Acuras (or whatever market you're going for)
without buying vast amounts of air time and putting a
competent, catchy, all-out campaign behind it. 
Because there simply aren't enough current members of
our Secret Society, no matter how passionate or
articulate we may be, to make much difference one way
or another to the General's bottom line.  They're
going to have to sell them to... ordinary people.  

And what's the point of having a Secret Society if
ANYONE can join it?

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
.
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
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