Lotus Marketing opinions?

[Jonhklee]

I can’t help to think Lotus marketing is trying way too hard and overly arty impressionistic!!

Why doesn’t Porsche do gimmicky marketing? Because their cars sells themselves, based on past cars which were very very good and based on a loyal customer base.

Lotus need to focus on delivering the quality in their cars with good comms without the overly arty gimmick!! It’s trying a bit too hard IMHO. The Eletra is FAR from simplistic, but yet trying to shoe-hone it into the Lotus ethos! 🤦🏻‍♂️ Even the design is overly fussy compared with the lines of the Emira and past cars!

What’s your opinion on Lotus marketing!?

 

[DerTheDer]

If you dont understand the marketing, you are not the target audience. Watch the video and tell me the one target group that is not represented in there?. Simple as that. For the record I agree with everything you say.

Marketing is shit and I own 2 lotus.

 

[Tonyshepp]

If you took Lotus branding out it could be an advert for Zara clothes for him and her.

 

[Johnson]

This whole advertising theme is terrible. Makes me quite embarrassed for the brand. It‘s trying to boost the luxury credentials of the brand, while forgetting the history. And you never ever try to tell a potential customer how they’re supposed to think.

 

[TXEMIRA]

“Lotus Marketing” is the equivalent of “plant-based meat”.

See also; Yeti, or Loch Ness Monster

#ForTheMyths

 

[digilotus]

The marketing department must have just watched "The Devil wears Prada"

 

[dgrace]

For The Dancers?

 

[Green]

🤷‍♂️ No strong reaction either way for me. I think the message is conveyed well maybe just to artsy for some.

 

[roundincircles]

Trouble with marketing is that the persons managing it are trying to communicate something they want understood……….but the audience can’t figure out the message.

My guess is they are trying to build brand values…….but Colin Chapmen kinda set it in stone when he said weight is the enemy of performance…..he is turning in his grave.

 

[Eagle7]

Everyone in this ad has absolutely nothing to do with driving. For the drivers? No, for the outliers, the weird, the ones you avoid if you see them in public. This looks like a Chinese attempt to do an Apple commercial; same type of people in it, same tempo. The slogan might as well be For The Extreme Left.

Very few snippets of images of the vehicle, waaaay too many images of the narcissistic types who imagine themselves to be just SO elite and ahead of everyone else. The reason why it looks like they're ahead of everyone else is because they're the only ones there. Everyone else is living their lives and doing things like... driving.

The only saving grace for Lotus is the Emira looks so stunning, it's going to pull customers by itself. The ads are rubbish as the Brits say. Can you imagine Russell or Gavan flipping around in the dark under a spotlight, flinging paint on the wall while trying to design a car?? Or the interior designers hanging shreds of cloth and leather in weird patterns on one of their employees while trying to design the interior??

Holy crappoli. If this is coming from their comms department, maybe we DON'T want more comms from them.

 

[virtualmacho]

Hold it... these may be the new body and interior color schemes for the 135...

 

[R1272]

Total crap. I own a production company and can tell you that this is typical 'Big Agency" garbage. I hate all of the stuff Alfa produced on the 4C as well. Hard to watch.

 

[~el~jefe~]

SJW - Woke stuff. I mean, the company is owned 51% by a Communist Dictatorship. This stuff has to be brainswashing at maximum.
From a REALIST standpoint, the actors in this are not the intended audience for a British sports car. However, it will allow people who are woke to feel ok buying Lotus as it represents their untested and ephemeral and insular ideals.
This emphasizes: idiots who ride bicycles in NY City against traffic>
- battery operated shit-box EV's (silent etc)
- globalism
People buying this car: above 40 years old, men, wealthy, who like to drive. Commercial? SJW virtue signalling hoping that the world buys China stuff after they undermine western civilization enough.

 

[TomAce]

Well, that commercial is imho an attempt to draw new customers to the brand, especially those who have been driving Porsche Caymans or Audi TTs so far. People who see cars as lifestyle products, not really for the drivers.

We, the die-hard fans, don't need this kind of commercial. They tried to give the brand a touch of avantgarde and at the same time not to put off us as the old guard of customers showing some bits and sounds of the Emira. They try to combine what's nearly impossible. Well, let's wait and see how it all will turn out in the end.

 

[switchlanez]

SJW - Woke stuff. I mean, the company is owned 51% by a Communist Dictatorship. This stuff has to be brainswashing at maximum.
From a REALIST standpoint, the actors in this are not the intended audience for a British sports car. However, it will allow people who are woke to feel ok buying Lotus as it represents their untested and ephemeral and insular ideals.
This emphasizes: idiots who ride bicycles in NY City against traffic>
- battery operated shit-box EV's (silent etc)
- globalism
People buying this car: above 40 years old, men, wealthy, who like to drive. Commercial? SJW virtue signalling hoping that the world buys China stuff after they undermine western civilization enough.

That's kind of a reach linking random imagery to politicize hot button issues. I see it as straight marketing to a clearly defined target audience.

The "globalism" might be because it is a global market car, probably more than ever in Lotus history. Diverse, not a buyer monolith.

Millennials recently eclipsed boomers as the largest population and the next 6-8 years will see a $68 trillion transfer of wealth to millennials. Appropriately, this targets professional white-collar millennials (and younger Xers) into arts and culture or athletics.

Being in that demographic myself, I find this ad straddling the border somewhere between try-hard edgy and pretentious. But not surprising as we've all seen a similar aesthetic with that young Asian lady driving the Emira on a somewhat surreal Big Sur backdrop with psychedelic colors and lo-fi ambient techno music.

Seems consistent with their new branding image of minimalist sans-serif lettering in logo and no silver outlines:

And digital glitch--it's actually Morse code (dashes/dots) which is the earliest form of digital communications using discrete value encoding--with a bright colorful aesthetic:

All this has a retrofuture vibe which my generation is into ("newtro" in Korea). Esp. early digital things from the 1980s like in Ready Player One, Stranger Things, Blade Runner 2049, C4 Corvettes are making a comeback, etc.

Lotus also leaned into this with the Esprit which, I'll admit, appeals to me:

 

[wallstbear]

I am shocked that you think Lotus does their commercials in house...

Lotus getting some generic artsy crap from an ad agency is no different than me getting a pressure cooker that is more looks than use.

 

[Pav]

You can see what they're doing (and paying royally for no doubt), all a bit weird and kind of jarring but what a lot of 'luxury' brand ad campaigns try to achieve. Someone probably read the brief, saw 'core values are lightness and agility' and (un)imaginatively proposed dancers as the metaphor. Genius! It looks pretty and plays well at the company board meeting where CMO presents it as delivering on the objective of luxury lifestyle brand. If the orders keep rolling in it will continue. Probably be more interesting to see what happens if they don't.

I've worked in advertising and marketing for years and sort of love to hate it! It's mostly tosh but some of it works.

 

[EspritGuy]

If you dont understand the marketing, you are not the target audience. Watch the video and tell me the one target group that is not represented in there?. Simple as that. For the record I agree with everything you say.

Marketing is shit and I own 2 lotus.

Wow. I've read every post before this. There's lots of strong opinion here among Emira fans.

Last ICE: irritable car enthusiasts?

Oh yes the ad is crap and an affront to driving enthusiasts, where performance is different from transportation.
It's not the Lotus I knew or want to know.

 

[frazzer]

Embarrassing...buying a sports car is essentially irrational and an emotive choice, so they have to appeal to impulse and suggest that their products will express our individuality, which of course is a complete delusion - society is a giant bell curve as moulded and dumbed down by media and government and most people are sheep and adopt the latest social orthodoxy as dictated to them. They then need an outlet to feel they have something left of themselves so they buy mass produced products to adorn themselves. Yes, we're all stuck in this absurd world, myself included. Mix that up with some woke agenda (irony becoming more apparent I hope) plus the worn out and absurd stereotype of creative people being weird and impulsive (no one paints like that) and you have this pretentious BS.

But I'm not the target audience, show a nice car going broom broom and fast around corners I'd they'd have me in seconds

 

[Eagle7]

If you watched the progress in the threads where @eclat2emira was painting images of the Emira in an artistic style, they were a lot of work, they were stylistic, they were beautiful.

A much better ad would have been to have snippets of Russell, Gavan and maybe Matt talking as a background vocal, about their dreams and goals for Lotus and its future; while watching a slide show of eclat2emira's paintings evolve to the finish product. At the end as he is done, the Emira on his painting comes to life and drives off down the highway.

This would illustrate the artistry, the hard work, the results, and appeal to anyone in the arts as well as anyone who likes cars. It would be classy, elegant, and refreshingly different. Artistry you can get in and drive.