Viral Car Marketing: The Nissan GTR Supercar mythos

I was looking through RideLust’s Most Lustable Cars of 2008 and came to the number one result: The Nissan GT-R. This got me thinking a bit about the art of creating “anticipation” in advertising.

Clearly, to be number one on the list of “upcoming” products in a particular niche, you have to do some savvy pre-product marketing. If people are going to anticipate your product, they need to know about your product.

One of the best ways to create anticipation about a product is to target enthusiasts. Not only are enthusiasts the most likely to purchase a product in their niche, but they are also most likely to spread the word and create a buzz. So, to create anticipation, you want to build a product or service that enthusiasts will be talking (and salivating ) about.

In the car industry, there are only a handful of ways to create lots of buzz. A) Energy Efficiency B) Brand New Technology C) Price-point and D) Ultra High-Craftsmanship and New Performance Benchmarks.

For the Nissan GT-R, Nissan decided to primarily target D) but in the process have magnified D) with C) by coming in with a price point that is affordable for the middle-class male (the target of this product).

Nissan has targeted D) by making sure that each every engine is carefully hand-built and fine-tuned by an expert engine craftsman. In addition, the car is being built with the goal of setting performance records on famous racetracks around the world. In fact, part of Nissan’s marketing ploy has been to race the car on famous tracks across the world.

Every attention to detail was put into making this car the ultimate in performance perfection. According to Autoblog, Nissan spent two years in the wind tunnel refining the GT-R’s shape to achieve a Cd of .27. Every crease, bulge and kink is there for an explicit purpose.

Because of the care that Nissan has put into building this car, they have gotten enthusiasts such as Edmunds Inside Line calling it the “most eagerly anticipated new performance car of the century” [source].

And because of enthusiasts like Autoblog and Edmunds, the Nissan GT-R is indeed shaping up to be the car that every car enthusiast wants. It’s already got a cult-like following (as any good product should have before it is released).

But at the same time, it’s also poised to make a positive impression on the overall quality of the Nissan brand. Nissan doesn’t come close to Honda and Toyota in US sales. But establishing themselves as a company that builds top of the line, ultra-high-quality supercars will go along way to install confidence in their general consumer products as well.