Branding and Brand Power – The Porsche Case
It’s not in everyone’s capacity to make a brand that becomes an icon. There are brands that make people rave over them, as if they were the ultimate prize in life. It is in every marketer’s dream to create such a brand, to capture people’s imagination and to go wild in the market. But are brands built purely on the basis of sound marketing strategy? Are brands really influenced by a host of other factors that form an indispensable part of business or can they stand tall even when things around them seemingly fall apart?
Porsche is one brand that gets people go in a frenzy at the very thought of it. But Porsche was surrounded with problems till very recently. If you are talking of the company, Porsche is in a mess. Mired in debt, Porsche was looking for financial credits from Middle East Investors to survive; that was after Porsche infamously launched its bid to take over Volkswagen in a futile attempt that never was. Now, Porsche is getting back to its roots, with management changes wrecking its spirits. With all of that, today, Porsche is only as strong as it has ever been, if not stronger.
Porsche Repositioning with Panamera: What’s more, Porsche, with its latest blitz in the form of Porsche Panamera, is positioning itself as a responsible model, aimed at the mature buyer who has been enamored by Porsche in his more adventurous days. And from a brand that was known for its rear-engine powered beasts, Porsche has switched gears on to a front-engine model, another attempt at modifying its image to suit a broader target market.
Porsche Brand Power: In Porsche, the corporate image has not diluted the brand, despite the company having been in stages of utter confusion and near collapse, landing up at the mercy of its big brother, Volkswagen. The slew of management changes and uncertainty at the top hasn’t meant a thing for the speedster. Even as Porsche emerged out of its problems, it tried some radically different tricks in its marketing department, changing its target market and creating a slightly sombre image for the power-packed model. And despite the recent spate of bad press, Porsche doesn’t seem to show any hint of the magic that it has wielded on the consumer’s minds, deteriorating or going weak. Well, not every brand can do that – but Porsche has done all this and more!
