Those were some weird answers.
5 Questions with Cadillac CMO Uwe Ellinghaus
5 Questions with Cadillac CMO Uwe Ellinghaus
BrandChannel
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The new heads of Cadillac are in the midst of a grand plan to elevate the General Motors luxury marque to the same neighborhood as the German segment leaders and Lexus.
Cadillac global CMO Uwe Ellinghaus and his new boss, Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen, must carve out a more robust and distinctive identity for Cadillac as a serious competitor at the top of the global luxury automotive pyramid. With his prior experience at BMW, Ellinghaus was in the midst of a desperately-needed brand overhaul at Cadillac—redefining it as a distinctly American luxury brand (not a German wannabe) and preparing a new product nomenclature for the brand—when de Nysschen arrived in August.
Now he has a key partner to execute on the brand's global goals: holding firm on pricing, boosting the customer experience at dealerships, and launching a new flagship Cadillac CT6 sedan and ad campaign—not to mention shaking up the status quo by moving Cadillac headquarters from Detroit to New York.
In a further challenge, Cadillac has seen US sales dip (with dealers already warned that things will get worse before they get better) in a year that sibling Buick has been crushing, despite reaching new heights in China. On the precipice of a crucial year, Ellinghaus discussed the Cadillac brand strategy with Dale Buss of brandchannel.
Interview
1) You've been working on turning Cadillac around for almost a year now. What was your first major contribution?
Ellinghaus: It was to show my bosses at GM that luxury works differently than the non-luxury market. GM has huge expertise in technology and engineering, and financially it is in good shape as well, but they didn't understand that a luxury brand works differently. It's all about focus, continuity and consistency—the sort of secondary virtues that the German brands are so good at. Those are some good ingredients for successful branding.
2) How did you begin to apply that to Cadillac?
Ellinghaus: We needed to establish what Cadillac stands for, and not even a couple of values had been defined. What do we bring to the table and how do we explain to customers why to go with a Cadillac rather than something else? We had to set out positioning that differentiated us from the German brands; you can't build a brand emulating your competitors, and in some ways GM admires these brands too much. So Cadillac was missing a little bit on its own heritage and efforts beyond the distinctiveness of our styling.
3) What was the brand missing in terms of relevance?
Ellinghaus: People didn't know what Cadillac stands for. The previous thought was that we have to go in between the segments dominated by the Germans. But I said we need to right-size our cars and make our nomenclature clear. [GM CEO] Mary Barra herself assigned me to come up with a suggestion for fixing the nomenclature. Future cars will have "CT" and then a number behind it that indicates its size in our hierarchy, and future SUVs and crossovers will have an "XT" and a number.
4) You've talked about restoring a sense of "American-ness" to Cadillac. Give me an example of what you have in mind.
Ellinghaus: Well, our marketing will be less technology-driven than in the past. We will walk away from black cars in all of our communications, because that conveys the opposite of optimism. And we will reinject more vibe into the brand. And if you really don't want the American spirit that this brand embodies, then go to the German brands.
5) I know you believe in Cadillac's well-established design language and that it needs to be refined. In what ways is that happening?
Ellinghaus: We're staying with the vertical front grill and carrying the crest and some other elements forward. But we are adding proportion and presence and stance and muscularity, and looking at things like the size of the "greenhouse" versus the rest of the car. It must be about performance and the future. We don't want to go back to a bigger, more comfort-oriented car of the past. Cadillac will not be the car for a couch potato.
BrandChannel
The new heads of Cadillac are in the midst of a grand plan to elevate the General Motors luxury marque to the same neighborhood as the German segment leaders and Lexus.
Cadillac global CMO Uwe Ellinghaus and his new boss, Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen, must carve out a more robust and distinctive identity for Cadillac as a serious competitor at the top of the global luxury automotive pyramid. With his prior experience at BMW, Ellinghaus was in the midst of a desperately-needed brand overhaul at Cadillac—redefining it as a distinctly American luxury brand (not a German wannabe) and preparing a new product nomenclature for the brand—when de Nysschen arrived in August.
Now he has a key partner to execute on the brand's global goals: holding firm on pricing, boosting the customer experience at dealerships, and launching a new flagship Cadillac CT6 sedan and ad campaign—not to mention shaking up the status quo by moving Cadillac headquarters from Detroit to New York.
In a further challenge, Cadillac has seen US sales dip (with dealers already warned that things will get worse before they get better) in a year that sibling Buick has been crushing, despite reaching new heights in China. On the precipice of a crucial year, Ellinghaus discussed the Cadillac brand strategy with Dale Buss of brandchannel.
Interview
1) You've been working on turning Cadillac around for almost a year now. What was your first major contribution?
Ellinghaus: It was to show my bosses at GM that luxury works differently than the non-luxury market. GM has huge expertise in technology and engineering, and financially it is in good shape as well, but they didn't understand that a luxury brand works differently. It's all about focus, continuity and consistency—the sort of secondary virtues that the German brands are so good at. Those are some good ingredients for successful branding.
2) How did you begin to apply that to Cadillac?
Ellinghaus: We needed to establish what Cadillac stands for, and not even a couple of values had been defined. What do we bring to the table and how do we explain to customers why to go with a Cadillac rather than something else? We had to set out positioning that differentiated us from the German brands; you can't build a brand emulating your competitors, and in some ways GM admires these brands too much. So Cadillac was missing a little bit on its own heritage and efforts beyond the distinctiveness of our styling.
3) What was the brand missing in terms of relevance?
Ellinghaus: People didn't know what Cadillac stands for. The previous thought was that we have to go in between the segments dominated by the Germans. But I said we need to right-size our cars and make our nomenclature clear. [GM CEO] Mary Barra herself assigned me to come up with a suggestion for fixing the nomenclature. Future cars will have "CT" and then a number behind it that indicates its size in our hierarchy, and future SUVs and crossovers will have an "XT" and a number.
4) You've talked about restoring a sense of "American-ness" to Cadillac. Give me an example of what you have in mind.
Ellinghaus: Well, our marketing will be less technology-driven than in the past. We will walk away from black cars in all of our communications, because that conveys the opposite of optimism. And we will reinject more vibe into the brand. And if you really don't want the American spirit that this brand embodies, then go to the German brands.
5) I know you believe in Cadillac's well-established design language and that it needs to be refined. In what ways is that happening?
Ellinghaus: We're staying with the vertical front grill and carrying the crest and some other elements forward. But we are adding proportion and presence and stance and muscularity, and looking at things like the size of the "greenhouse" versus the rest of the car. It must be about performance and the future. We don't want to go back to a bigger, more comfort-oriented car of the past. Cadillac will not be the car for a couch potato.
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When I see one of these, i think .. drug dealer![]()
In real world™ marketing at major MNCs, you make substantive choices backed by facts and data.
Black and silver (and gold in some cultures) are known to be strongly associated with luxury, exclusivity, and upscale goods. There are psychological studies behind this. Can you argue in favor of red or white, especially for an underdog in need of global attention? Sure, but you don't give "umm, car pics are going to be not-black" as an answer to a question about Cadillac's "Americanness."
In this case, it's whimsy masked as managerial action, BS spewed forth because he couldn't answer the question, because he (and Cadillac, and GM, and most of us) have no clue what American luxury is supposed to be.
"Cadillac is about American luxury!"
'What is American luxury?'
"No more black cars in brochures!"
Reminds me of when Buick's slogan was "The Spirit of American Style" featuring Harley Earl's ghost in TV ads. No one knew what the hell "American style" meant, the message didn't stick, and now Buick's most competent offering is an Opel. I'm all in favor of using nationality to define a brand as Jaguar is distinctly British, Volvo is very Swedish, Lexus is proudly Japanese, and Ferrari is very Italian, but if you can't provide a pithy answer to a basic question about how that nationality is interpreted in the context of your product, you need to find another direction.
Au contraire. Retail/service experience is one thing at which Cadillac truly excels. Cadillac was the #1 luxury automotive brand (and #1 overall) in J.D. Power's 2014 Customer Service study:
And when did Lexus ever out-engineer the Germans?
Ooooh, I haven't yet! Describe it?
Get off my forum, you mumbling, stuttering bommunist.
Red universally expresses the virility Badillac is going for. Goes back to their red-blooded luxury bit.
Easy. Because it's corny as ****.
Armed with her roll of quarters and a voucher to the buffet, good ole granny's gonna strike gold in the Eldorado before she goes back home on the Serendipity bus.
Take your head out of 1972 and you'll realize Eldorado no longer means anything to anyone.
Okay... but now what do Cadillac's demographics look like and how do they compare to BMW/MB and what do they expect from Cadillac versus the Germans?Au contraire. Retail/service experience is one thing at which Cadillac truly excels. Cadillac was the #1 luxury automotive brand (and #1 overall) in J.D. Power's 2014 Customer Service study:
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If Cadillac has a less wealthy clientele that has lower expectations, those results aren't really indicative of a superior experience... are they?
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