Marketing Manipulation

Brands use advertising, copywriting, imagery, color, logos, fonts, and even packaging to tell what’s known as their brand story.

They hope that brand story will get you to buy their products.

The best brands tell authentic stories, and the worst brands just straight up lie to get your money.

Most brands fall somewhere in the middle, highlighting certain parts of their story that they think will get you to buy, while conveniently leaving out other parts of the story that might be contradictory.

The more you understand how brands use these stories to manipulate you, the more you’ll start to realize that everything is marketing.

Anytime I’m talking about this concept, one of my favorite brand stories to reference is from Jeep. Almost every piece marketing they put out shows people driving Jeeps across rugged terrain, climbing dirt trails, and going off road.They do this because Jeep doesn’t sell cars, they sell freedom.

And they sell that freedom to Americans who don’t follow the rules, people who take the road less traveled, the one that’s not paved. They sell cars to people who want to go anywhere and do anything. And it works.Jeep sold about 85,000 Wranglers in 2023.

BUUUUUT!

How many of those Jeep owners actually take their cars off-road?

According to Mark Allen, head of design at Jeep, only about 10% - 15%.So if Jeep knows that the majority of their customers aren’t hardcore off-roaders, why don’t they change their story to appeal to all the soccer moms that actually do buy their Jeeps?

They don’t because they’re story is that they’re an “aspirational brand”, Jeep buyers aspire to be in that off roader tribe, so they buy the Jeep, and the promise of freedom that comes with it.

So as long as 10% of buyers continue to push their Jeeps to the limits, they’ll continue to drive the other 90% to aspire to do the same.

And Jeeps actually ARE some of the most capable off road vehicles you can buy, that part of the story is true and it’s why the story actually works

BUT, another part of the Jeep story is that Jeep is actually owned by a company called Stellantis, a multinational corporation headquartered in Amsterdam, which was formed by the merger of the Italian company, Fiat, and the French PSA group.

So at the end of the day, Jeep owners are being sold the story of rugged American adventure by a bunch of Euros who probably ride a bike to work.

Another “American” car company which is actually ALSO owned by Stellantis, is Dodge.

And they’ve been pushing the whole American muscle car heritage story for the last 15 years or so.

They made one my favorite commercials ever, it’s the one where George Washington leads the charge against the British in his badass Challenger, forcing the redcoats to retreat from the battlefield.

The commercial ends with George “I cannot tell a lie” Washington proudly standing next to his Challenger, the American Flag waving proudly out the window, with the Narrator saying,

“Here’s a couple of things America got right, Cars, and Freedom.”

Even more amazing is how they aired this commercial for the first time in 2010 during the U.S. vs England world cup soccer match.

So again, it’s this European company selling America to Americans,

But to be fair to Stellantis, they do still have their North America division located in Auburn Hills, Michigan. So, at least the Challengers were built by Americans employed in the motor city.

Right?

Nope.

Every single Dodge Challenger ever made, was actually built 229 miles North of Auburn Hills at their manufacturing plant in Brampton Ontario, Canada.

I don’t want to take anything away from the ad wizards who came up with that commercial it’s an all time great, and I’m sure it helped make the Dodge Challenger one of the most popular cars of the last decade or so. I’m just simply highlighting the part of the story we’re told vs the parts that have been left out.

These stories get us to buy into the idea that, “I’m one of them.” …..Or in the case of Jeep, “I want to be one of them.” But how many of these people that are buying into this American Pride car story would keep buying if they knew the whole story?

I’ll bet the average Jeep or Dodge owner thinks their car is as American as Apple Pie.

Well, they’d actually be kinda right considering Apple pie originated in England.

One more car brand example, Subaru. Subaru is a car company whose story is all about good vibes. Their marketing is almost exclusively built on imagery of happy, good-hearted people doing good deeds.

In their ads people are Cleaning up beaches, saving animals, recycling, etc.

And Subaru owners LOVE their Subarus. They are consistently ranked at or near the top of most customer satisfaction surveys for car brands year after year.

In fact, their most famous and successful marketing campaign is,

“Love. It’s what makes Subaru, Subaru.”

And over the last 16 years, their annual “share the love event” has donated over $285 million dollars for charity, which lines up perfectly with their whole lovefest.

But another thing they’re not really highlighting during beach cleanups, is the fact that Subaru is also one of the leading manufacturers of Apache attack helicopters for the Japanese military.

Meaning Subaru also makes some of the most advanced weapons of war known to man.

So I guess War is also what makes Subaru, a Subaru.