Okay, so last week I blabber about how Yamaha changed the target market of Mio from female to male with the introduction of Mio Soul. I expect other brands will follow suit (Honda & Suzuki) because as far as these eyes can see, all automatic scooters are being driven by the male population. However, yesterday I saw an ad about Honda Vario, they still use this popular actress to promote the brand alone, without any hint whatsoever to indicate that this scooter is a unisex bike. On the other side of the competition, Suzuki launched Skywave, the successor of the not so popular Spin, an automatic scooter. The advertisement clearly shows a very macho man and a very sexy woman, just like Yamaha did with the new Mio soul.

So will this bring about wrong image delivery to Honda Vario? After all, people aspire to the “representation” of people displayed on the ad. Well, the answer is not that simple… First of all, if anybody remember how Honda Jazz (Fit) is advertised here in Indonesia, then people will acknowledge that Honda used a pair of popular female singers to endorse the product. So does only female buys Jazz? No, does only young people buy Jazz? Not so much.

Here we have what I would like to call, “splash damage”, the message that originally intended towards specific target audience spreads to other expected segment. When people buy something first they have to go through what marketing defines as The Buying Process, yes, a process. In it, people will go through several phases, first people will acknowledge/know the product, then interest will grow, decision making is formed and action is taken to buy or not to buy. Yes, it is AIDA we are talking about here, the basic skill we learn at faculty of communication, but do you notice there’s a few word that I leaned? (pardon the pun)…

Decision making, what is all that about, and what it got to do with Honda Vario? Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know. But one thing for sure, this has got to do with target audience and target market. When you sell a baby’s milk, do you create:

a. Advertisement for the baby

b. Advertisement for the mother

c. Advertisement for the father

Sane people will choose mother or father, but the product (the milk) is consumed by the baby, so why not create an ad for the baby? Anybody who asks of this should be shunned out of society immediately. Of course the baby couldn’t comprehend the ad, they doesn’t even comprehend why the sky is blue or why daddy hump mommy at night in front of them. Thus this explains the very basic of the difference between target market and target audience; with the baby being the target market and the parents as the target audience.

Anyway, back to the matter, so why is Honda still uses a female representative to promote Vario? Simple, because Honda Jazz is promoted by two female singers and we all know that most Jazz drivers are male.

Okay, I’m just throwing stuff away, I’ll finish this topic on next time weekend rollade, till then, tuddles!

Oh almost forgot… Need to finish up comeback marketing write ups… Probably when I feel like it.

Related posts:

1. Marketing Garbage Update…
2. Weekend Rollade, comeback marketing and insomnia attack! (Part uno)
3. Experimental marketing (image repositioning)… Get used to it
4. Weekend rollade
5. Preemptive Claim in Marketing