{"id":7189,"date":"2009-03-10T02:32:20","date_gmt":"2009-03-10T07:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=7189"},"modified":"2010-12-23T04:00:21","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T09:00:21","slug":"a-study-in-marketing-the-scion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/03\/10\/a-study-in-marketing-the-scion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scion: A Study in Marketing and Misfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Scion is an interesting study in marketing.\u00a0 Scion (noun: descendant) is a subsidiary of Toyota.\u00a0 Why Scion? Well, Toyota wanted to sell cars to young, hip, urban guys but (as we all know) Toyotas are for fuddy duddies (yeah I’m talkin’ to you).\u00a0 So Toyota started Scion<\/a>.\u00a0 Scions are really just Toyotas, less the fuddy duddy baggage.\u00a0 Toyota has marketed Scions accordingly.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are some commercials:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Scion advertising features young people of color, usually men, in urban spaces (found here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"1022scion14_big\"<\/p>\n

I have a Scion.\u00a0 This one:<\/p>\n

\"dscf0127\"<\/p>\n

When I walked into the Madison, Wisconsin Toyota dealer to purchase it, there were a dozen middle-aged white men with pot-bellies, and a Latina that looked about 16 years old.\u00a0 She was the Scion salesperson.\u00a0 (Hi Celia!)<\/p>\n

Also appealing to its intended customers, Toyota encourages you to customize your Scion.\u00a0 When I purchased the car, I had the option of adding neon trim around the bottom of the car, glowing cup holders,\u00a0and giant speakers that took up the entire back seat.\u00a0 Factory installed.\u00a0 (I opted for all three, of course.)<\/p>\n

Scion encourages these\u00a0additions.\u00a0 As the commercials show, Scion emphasizes customization and the individualization of\u00a0your car.\u00a0 “United by Individuality” is one of their advertising\u00a0themes\u00a0(found here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"im-i-mb\"<\/p>\n

Underneath each of these unique Scions is the name of its owner.\u00a0 These names include Carlos V., Claudell D., Javier C., Benilda D., Jesus V., Kekai K., Nickoli C., Mario N., Einar A., Jose S., and Jose R.\u00a0 They’re definitely not marketing to the stereotypical Toyota crowd.<\/p>\n

The marketing of the Scion points to how we separate old from young and then layer the binary with further binaries: boring\/exciting, suburban\/urban, conformity\/individuality, and\u00a0even white\/non-white.\u00a0 Toyota doesn’t sell Scions by constantly reminding us that Scions are Toyotas (with all the dependability and efficiency that Toyotas are known for), just the opposite.\u00a0 And youth, Toyota appears to believe, want to differentiate themselves from dull, grown-up, suburban, whitebread conformity as much as possible.<\/p>\n

But here’s the twist:<\/p>\n

Celia (who I bought my Scion from in Madison, Wisconsin) told me that, despite all of their efforts, the “boxy” Scion (the one on the left in the first print ad) is bought disproportionately by elderly people.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because the spacious interior holds a wheelchair just as easily as a mountain bike or a drum kit and the height of the car makes it easy to get in and out of without having to pull yourself up or lower yourself down.<\/p>\n

Marketing, thanks to human creativity and free will, has its limits and marketers can’t always predict how their strategies will play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Scion is an interesting study in marketing.\u00a0 Scion (noun: descendant) is a subsidiary of Toyota.\u00a0 Why Scion? Well, Toyota wanted to sell cars to young, hip, urban guys but (as we all know) Toyotas are for fuddy duddies (yeah I’m talkin’ to you).\u00a0 So Toyota started Scion.\u00a0 Scions are really just Toyotas, less the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,23703,221,341],"class_list":["post-7189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-marketing","tag-cars","tag-ruralurban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7189"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7195,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189\/revisions\/7195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}