As my classmate Kathy Lee has pointed out in her blog, automakers are aggresively promoting their brands by positioning what they believe to be the most important factor in the mind of the consumer.
While Audi claimed to be good at racing, Subaru claimed it has the superior engine.
While brand positioning at this level may be effective to a certain degree, what’s more important is selling the entire ‘package’ of experience to the users.
As you can see above, that is a typical brand positioning graph, with two axis.
However, to be truly successful, it is important to think about multiple axis.This in turn, is selling an ecosystem.
Perhaps the importance of an ecosystem is best illustrated by Nokia. Nokia transitioned away from using their own Symbain operating system on their phones even though a lot has been invested for many years. As CEO of Nokia, Stephen Elop explains, the war is a ‘war of ecosystems’. Having the best phone hardware will not win customers because they want apps. Having the most apps will not win customers because they want integrated web services. Hardware, apps and web services are just few of the examples of which phone manufacturers are fighting to be the best in each criteria.
Therefore, to Subaru and Audi (and other car manufacturers out there):
Is having the best engine or winning the most races enough?