Awards are a significant factor in any company’s arsenal of marketing and promotion tactics. Every company would love to claim that its product is the “best” in its category. And, awards carry great weight with consumers as they look for independent validation of a company’s claims. For automotive manufacturers, one of the year’s most coveted awards is Motor Trend magazine’s Car of the Year.
This year, the Car of the Year and Truck of the Year awards both go to GM’s Chevrolet brand with the Colorado as this year’s top truck and the Camaro as this year’s top car. Other finalists for Car of the Year included the Audi TT, BMW 7 Series, Honda Civic, Mazda MX-5 Miata, Mercedes-Benz GT S, and Toyota Mirai. Top contenders in the truck category also included the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, GMC Canyon, GMC Sierra 1500, Nissan Titan XD, and Toyota Tacoma.
For the SUV of the Year award, the magazine choose the Volvo XC90. Other finalists in SUV category included the Honda Pilot, Lincoln MX, Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class, and Nissan Murano.
What are you driving?
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Discuss the importance of product awards.
- What is the PR value for awards?
- View Motor Trend’s Car of the Year: http://www.motortrend.com/awards/best-car-of-the-year/
- Discuss how GM can use the report in its marketing.
- What should companies that didn’t make the top list do to promote their vehicles?
- Review key aspects of developing a product positioning map, including determining the axis labels for positioning.
- Divide students into teams and have each team develop a positioning map for a category of automobiles.
Source: Motor Trend, Manufacturing Business Technology
