Marketing Zombie: Volvo

Marting Zombie Defined
One Marketing Zombie apes current marketing trends and doctrine without really understanding their implications. Newspapers discussing Web social networking strategies comes immediately to mind. Most newspaper sites scream an ugly truth. Newspapers believe they can transpose their print vehicle almost untouched to the Internet. Good luck with that.

Another kind of Marketing Zombie is one who insists on behaving in an outmoded way in the hopes consumers are coming around, they will again respond to the old marketing. Volvo - you are a Marketing Zombie. You can tell Volvo has joined the undead marketing ranks by watching their offensively stupid commercial (above). If I am out in the woods and some strange talking Swedish guy tells me to come follow him I am out of there.

What I find offensive, and you don't see this offense in the YouTube ad example above, beside the commercial's "we aren't listening" attitude, is the last line asking for $33,000 for their stupid car. Let me check this. I am going to choke up a full $10,000 more than a solid Honda or Toyota because some strange talking Pied Piper shows me just how magical his car is while we walk in the woods? And you have a bridge you want to sell me over some swamp land too I presume. Nope, not going to happen there Volvo and shame on you!!!

VOLVO WAKE UP!

The age when cars were magical is OVER. Cars cost too much, as your ad so clearly demonstrates, hurt the environment and are just plain stupid. We are stupider still because we've constructed our world around gasoline and metal (a cure for that oversight is coming soon). Volvo's are driven by old professors. They had a certain boxy elegance in their old faithful inelegant look and feel. Marketing Zombies are always behind their own trends. Companies, like people, always want something else. The grass is always greener, they believe, so they are always on the wrong side of the river.

In our stressed economic times Volvo could tout steady unsexy fuel efficiency. Instead they have a foreign guy doing a Doug Henning in the woods. Clearly Volvo is deaf and dumb. They only hear their own pomposity. The ultimate irony, and this is not the first time we've seen this, is the old Volvo marketing message WOULD WORK in our current depression. Plain, steady and true is what we seek. We won't find it at Volvo even though they used to be a source for exactly this kind of straight talk message and this missed opportunity is what makes Volvo a Marketing Zombie.

Post your Marketing Zombie nominations in comments or send to martinsellingzoe(at)aol(dot)com.

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Marketing Zombie Killer: BMW
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