re: The most annoying commercial currently going is the Chevy EV one

quote:

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GMC SIERRA EV DENALI EDITION 1

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Truck names are stupid long. GMC started the "brand within a brand" thing - at least they started proving that it can be highly successful with the Denali badge in the 1990s (which I think is a queue from BMW's M product line). Denali is apparently the best selling "luxury" automotive brand in the US, which annoys me because it's basically a very well marketed trim level. But it has proven to be insanely successful by attracting buyers with deeper pockets, more brand loyalty, and higher income than entire luxury makes like Cadillac, Lincoln, Acura, or Infiniti. It's like they just came up with it sometime in the late 1990s and now it's basically been more successful than some more established, older brands that are exclusively geared towards luxury vehicles.

And of course everyone else either copied GMC's marketing team on that or re-adjusted their own existing branding strategies based off of what they witnessed GMC do with the Denali brand.

So what do the automakers do with that successful marketing exercise? They started replicating that by converting packages to trim levels (Z71, Renegade, AT4, FX4, TRD, TRX, Pro4X, Black Label, AMG, N-Line, ZR2, ZL1, Z06, Rubicon, King Ranch, V-Sport, M-Sport, V series, F-Sport, etc.), then marketing them heavily on their own right. And of course that was highly successful too since everyone followed the Denali marketing playbook.

Then they took that a step farther and started pushing brand names for their individual features - like engines, transmissions, bed finishes, suspension, etc. They had to brand and emphasize the name of things like the Allison Transmission, Duramax Diesel, Powerstroke V8, KDSS suspension, MaxxForce powertrain, Dual Motor, etc All this de-emphasizes the actual vehicle maker's brand (like GMC, BMW, Honda, or Ford), so they counter that by making those particular badges GIANT on their vehicles. And that's especially prevalent on trucks where there is a lot of real estate on the grills to fit massive, elaborate branding.

My favorite now is the Ford F-250 Super Duty King Ranch 4x4 Powerstroke Diesel. They even have other editions you can get on top of that. It's like the truck name tells you every single option the sucker that bought it paid for. Every one of those things has a badge on the truck somewhere.