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March 31, 2007
Nissan's Pitch For Mini-Car: Accessorize It
Pino is Secondary In Spots That Woo Young Women
TOKYO -- Nissan Motor Co. had a tough challenge in launching its Pino minicar: Make it appeal to young female consumers who couldn't care less about cars.
While these deep-pocketed shoppers spend lavishly on clothes and accessories, cars are optional for many. Instead, they rely on bicycles, motorbikes or public transport. So Nissan Motor purposely avoided focusing too much attention on the car itself. Instead, television and print ads portray the Pino as just one item in a collage of accessories, such as plushy animals, furry seat cushions and heart-shaped decals. The Pino pamphlet, designed to read like a comic book, shows a group of fashionable youths eating cupcakes and showing off manicured nails that match the Pino's star upholstery pattern.
"If these young girls see a product that seems irrelevant to them, they'll make an instantaneous decision to ignore it," says Akinao Sato, an account director at TBWA/Hakuhodo, a Tokyo-based joint venture between Omnicom Group Inc.'s TBWA Worldwide and Hakuhodo Inc. that handles Nissan campaigns in Japan.
Nissan has no plans to take its minicars to the U.S. Even the most minute new models in the U.S. have much larger engines than Japanese minicars. "This is a Japan-only phenomenon," says Miwa Ishii, marketing manager for Nissan's minicar division.
Posted by Frank at March 31, 2007 7:18 AM | Filed under 2007 Vehicles
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