My Baby Drove Up In A Brand New Cadillac

I recently saw an item on Motoring TV with Cadillac introducing their latest model, the CT6. While promoting it, exec Uwe Ellinghaus was asked that old question about how they are going to attract younger buyers when they have a reputation as the old person's car. He has an interesting answer: he pointed out that the newest buyers are the children of the yuppies that fell in love with BMWs back in the 80's. So for them, German luxury cars are the old person's car, while they don't have much reason to be prejudiced against Cadillac.

That's an interesting lesson on how different generations can have different perspectives on the same items. But I'm not sure it's going to work out the way Cadillac is hoping. I mean, for the last twenty years, I've been waiting for Harley-Davidson's reputation to fall apart: for years now, their stereotypical badass rebel customers has been outnumbered by baby boomers desperate to rediscover their youth. And yet, a generation of middle-aged suburban customers hasn't seemed to dilute the brand's image. It seems that old people buying products isn't making them as uncool as they used to.

See, you would think that brand effects would go both ways. To use another automotive example, Porsche has a sporty image because of the sports cars it sells, so they sell lots of SUVs to people who want to feel sporty. But you'd think that actual sporty people wouldn't want to buy Porsche sports cars anymore, since they sell SUVs to suburbanite posers. Yet that doesn't seem to happen; Porsche maintains its reputation however many overpowered family transporters it sells.

So why is this? It could be that marketeers are skilled enough to maintain a brand's identity through advertising. After all, Nike is still seen as the brand of Michael Jordan, even though on the strength of sheer numbers, they should be the brand of white teenagers with poor spending priorities.

Or maybe the association with different populations isn't as toxic as it once was. Much as the media continues to portray millennials as some alien race, the fact is that social media encourages us to seek out people with similar interests and perspectives, even if they have very different backgrounds. It could be that a young motorbike enthusiast feels more of a kinship with an elderly biker who at least shares some values, than with a young person who's okay with getting everywhere by public transit. Ironically the social media that young people embrace actually makes them more like everyone else in society.