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Oldsmobile: Victim of Its Own Brand

Rob Walker
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2000, at 2:31 PM ET

The apparent wave of nostalgia that is greeting GM's decision to kill off the Oldsmobile line has caught me somewhat by surprise. In part this is probably because I haven't really thought about the brand since the late 1980s, when Public Enemy paid tribute to the classic Oldsmobile 98 model series in the lyrics of "You're Gonna Get Yours," which included Flavor Flav declaring the 98 "the ultimate homeboy car." Of less significance to me at the time (since I was about 19 and not really in the market for a new car) was the debut of the ad slogan, "This is not your father's Oldsmobile."

According to a time line in today's Wall Street Journal, that tag line made its debut in 1988. The (probably correct) conventional wisdom now seems to be that this marketing strategy pretty much marked the beginning of the end for the Olds. What's interesting about this is that it shows how a strongly defined brand identity--generally seen as a good thing--can, over time, become that brand's undoing.

As it happens, my father really did have an Oldsmobile or two. In the 1950s he drove a Rocket 88. Later, the Olds Cutlass was the "company car" provided to him for his sometimes driving-intensive work as a salesman. He's retired now, and my parents have long since become Ford loyalists, but the point is that there actually was a period when the Oldsmobile epitomized achievement in distinctly middle-class terms--a high-quality car, but nothing so snooty as a Cadillac.

What Oldsmobile was grappling with by the end of the 1980s was that middle-class achievement as an idea seemed sort of outdated, or at the very least, that was being redefined. Hence Olds' attempt to distance itself from everything it had stood for up to that point with the "Not your father's car" slogan. The problems with this, of course, were: a) It said what Olds wasn't, but not what it was, and b) it more or less informed a generation of Olds loyalists that their choice was now considered an embarrassment. This had the net effect not of reinventing the Olds brand identity but of carving it in stone. The tag line was replaced a couple of years later with the hilariously unwieldy: "We have got a brand new Oldsmobile, this is a new generation of Olds." This didn't help either.

Anyway, it's possible that a different marketing strategy would have helped, but I'm not sure. The real problem was that the old Olds identity had become so clearly and widely understood that it would have been almost impossible to overcome. Every company wants its brands to have a powerful meaning, and the idea of being perfectly in sync with the cultural moment sounds great. But the Olds story points to the related risk: When the cultural moment passes, a brand can quickly become the object of what may not be your father's nostalgia but is nostalgia just the same.

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Reader Comments From The Fray:


[Notes from the Fray Editor: Most posters included in their comments a description of a car, maybe their father's maybe not--see for example Mark Shulman, below, and also here and here. We were charmed.]


I worked at the Leo Burnett ad agency during the "It's not your father's Oldsmobile" era, and what Rob Walker said was absolutely correct--the campaign did a terrific job of telling Olds owners they were fogies without telling young people (by which I mean under 70) why they'd want the car.

Part of the problem is simply that the campaign was too obvious--you should redefine your target without so obviously saying that's what you're doing ("Olds. A new car for a new demographic!") Pepsi in the 60s went from being something to help you belch to something to help you pick up beach bunnies without saying "It's not your father's gastric upset aid." But the fact is, you can't blame Burnett too much--Olds just didn't have the cars to back up the slogan. Indeed, I disagree that it was the idea of middle-class achievement that went out of fashion--only the idea that Olds at all represented it. Olds was trying to fit under Cadillac without realizing that both of them had been knocked off a chart that now read Mercedes-BMW-Toyota-Honda-Nissan.

But you know, if you think about it Olds probably had 30 more years than it should have. I mean, the first part of the name is "Old" and the last part is the antiquated "-mobile" suffix. We might as well be asking why yuppies have finally stopped buying Stanley Steamers.

--Mike Gebert

(To reply, click here.)


It looks like most American automobile brands are going down the tubes. I don't know why. Perhaps it is due to better marketing techniques by the Japanese. Or to the little niceties such as built-in cupholders etc which were first done by the Japanese. The American manufacturers seem to be saying we know what you want and here it is. The foreign manufacturers seem to try to find out what people want or need. Maybe it has something to do with the outrageous cars of the late fifties when the American manufacturers said we wanted big cars and sold only big cars. I have driven American cars all of my life until recently when I inherited my wife's Nissan Maxima. I wondered why she bought it when she did. Since I have been driving it for about a year, I can see that it is a good car, and their six-cylinder engine is one of the best I have ever encountered. My last car was a Dodge Daytona Shelby turbo. I am planning to give it to one of my grandsons since I am tired of crashing gears.

--Charles J. Fickey

(To reply, click here.)


The problem Oldsmobile faced was not simply poor marketing: it was poor design (have you seen these things?) and poor performance (JD Power ratings) as well. Don't blame the marketing folks, blame the design and build by committee approach in Detroit.

--Sean r

(To reply, click here.)


My father was indeed an Olds man: our '72 Vista Cruiser was the sleekest station wagon on the road, rear skylight and all. And if you ask me which classy retread I'd like to own, it would surely be the '72 Cutlass convertible, for its great lines as well as the obvious childhood nostalgia.

What could GM have done with its languishing Olds brand? Take a note from Chrysler's PT Cruiser book, that's what. The PT is a hit, but all they did was put a new look to the Neon chassis. In the age of lookalike, soundalike, drivealike middle-market brands, GM could have a real gem on its hands: a hundred-year-old badge, fronting retro on the outside, new on the inside. A few fenders, some chrome and a few deft touches, and we could all be driving brand new cars of yesteryear. Hear that, Mustang?

--Mark Shulman

(To reply, click here.)

(12/18)

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