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The consumer’s perception of a vehicle – especially in terms of styling – is a powerful factor when making a buying decision. Buick is keenly aware of this, and is taking a bold step to boost market appeal. Its solution is a fresh design approach that’s making people ask: “Is that a Buick?”
An aggressive advertising campaign, entitled “Is That a Buick?”, shows puzzled onlookers not being able to identify a new Buick Encore. The automaker’s marketing and design gurus are saying, if people are questioning whether vehicles in the current lineup are Buicks, then they certainly will be surprised when next-generation models roll into dealer showrooms.
“As a challenger brand, part of what we have going in our favor is using the element of surprise,” said Molly Peck, Buick’s director of marketing. “And it’s about surprising and delighting our consumers. That’s what our campaign has been about for almost two years now.”
A major key to the success of Buick’s design renaissance has been its SUVs. “It started with the Enclave,” said Peck. “That’s been about nine years now. When it came to market that really was the stake in the ground that changed peoples’ minds about what they thought about Buick. It’s universally appealing and the design has endured.”
This year, Buick will have three SUVs, Peck said, and that’s where a lot of the market growth is occurring. Recently, the automaker bolstered its lineup with the stylish 2016 Envision compact luxury crossover. “We can see that growth with the Encore small SUV. We have not found how high is up with the sales volume of the Encore.”
The Encore, which was the first B-segment SUV to roll into the North American market, represents Buick’s spirit of innovation, said Bregt Ectors, Buick’s global strategic design director. Ectors also pointed to the sporty Regal GS sedan and fresh-to-market 2016 Cascada convertible as vehicles that reach people who would never have considered a Buick in the past.
Cascada represents the first page of a new brand book, created by marketing and design as a basic guide to where the brand is heading, Ectors explained. The goal is to reach out to a younger, more-progressive consumer without alienating the current customer base.
“To do that we have to come up with new brand pillars, and the number one brand pillar that we’re going after is sculptural beauty,” he said. “It’s all about evolution, not revolution.”
Achieving sculptural beauty with the Cascada required the design team to work heavily with clay models to manually “find sculpture” in the vehicle. The result, Ectors said, is a convertible with great overall proportions with the top down and the top up. “It’s sculpted, not constructed.”
Buick wants to do beautiful cars, he said, and you can see that in the Avenir concept, introduced two years ago, and in this year’s Avista show vehicle. The Avenir sedan is the “ultimate expression of luxury” for Buick, and the Avista 2+2 coupe was created to rekindle Buick’s performance roots.
These concept vehicles signal that designers will not force signature Buick design elements on future cars.
Traditional styling cues such as portholes, sweepspears, and waterfall grilles will only be considered if they are integral to design, can be done in a modern way, and help the design, Ectors said, “so, a porthole does not a Buick make.”
The same philosophy of not forcing design elements also applies to the new interiors, he said, noting the use of wood as a prime example.
“In the past, we in the automotive industry have used wood – and it’s not real wood – on pieces that you could not make out of wood. And that doesn’t feel real,” Ectors said. “Wood will only be used on future Buicks if it really belongs there, feels right, and fits the shape of the dcor.
“We’re really going after the total experience that our customers have in the car, which is more than just design,” he said. “Everything needs to function well, everything needs to be in the right place, needs to feel the right way, and needs to look the right way.”
Buick is sending a clear message that it isn’t a car company that checks the boxes on exterior and interior design elements before a vehicle can be proclaimed a Buick.
“We have a very open design DNA, and what that means is that we’re not prescriptive, we’re descriptive to our designs,” Ectors said. “We set up the proportions of the vehicle up front, and then we give that back to the designers and say, ‘Go and do a beautiful Buick.'”