Top Gear. It’s one of my favourite shows. Jeremy’s biting humour, James’ old-fashioned ways and Richard’s … Richard-ness – and then there are the cars. As most boys, I have been intrigued by fast cars since before I can remember and last Thursday I got to see the fastest. The Bugatti Veyron SuperSport. A 1200 horsepower, 16.4L W16 moster capable of reaching over 260mph (that’s a speed in excess of 430km/h!)
Then it struck me. Have you ever seen a TV advertisement for the Bugatti Veyron? An “official” Facebook page? A Twitter Account? Heck, a picture in a magazine? The answer is no. This is because for a car that costs a whopping $2.5 Million CDN, you aren’t targeting a typical audience. Someone who drives a Veyron could probably impulse-buy their own island so they would have no need to pay attention to conventional methods of marketing. This raises the question: If you can’t use typical marketing methods to attract your target market, what do you do to promote yourself?
The answer is simple – create a unique, high quality product that cannot be replicated. By breaking the official land-speed record for a road legal car, Bugatti has done just this. They have positioned themselves as the only choice for someone with a seriously deep pocket looking for a comically fast car. While you may think that these people exist only in theory, recent sales and production efforts for Bugatti’s Veyron have actually been rising. One day….
