The Importance of a Good Brand Strategy: Promise, Trust and Belonging

If you are interested in cars and have been on the internet at all for the past few years, you already know about the recently unveiled Toyota Supra. You probably also know it received some mixed reception, with some enthusiasts outright angry at Toyota’s attempt to revitalize the beloved ’90s icon, attacking everything from her looks to BMW’s controversial engine. In this article, we’ll dive into the main reasons why the new Supra is receiving so much hate from the motoring community. Spoiler alert: It has almost nothing to do with the performance of the car, and everything to do with the brand.

On paper, the new Supra is everything a Supra should be, picking up exactly where the previous generation left off. Do not believe me? We’ll, in proper market position, be at the top of the Toyota Sport lineup, not skipping the luxury toes of its sister company, Lexus. It’s priced competitively compared to other flagship sports cars, even against some of the same models that were around 20 years ago. Its price is exactly the same as the previous generation (adjusted for inflation, of course). It has a six-cylinder engine with two turbochargers, just like the previous one. You might not agree, but I think it looks the part (fake vents aside), especially when wearing a TRD tracksuit—although I would have preferred the FT-1 concept.

If everything looks so great, why has it become so polarized? Is it just a bunch of angry fans who can’t afford one? Or couldn’t the Supra be a Supra, even if it checked all the right boxes? Here comes the brand misalignment.

Brand

First, let’s talk about the term “trademark”. Most people assume that “brand” is interchangeable with words like “business” or “logo” – but it’s so much more than that. Think of branding as the sum of all the experiences you have with an organization. Every logo you see, every digital ad you click on, every belief you read, every customer service experience, and all the products you use are extensions of the company’s brand.

I tend to go into more detail, saying that the brand experience consists of three parts arranged in chronological order: Promise , Trust , and Belonging . If you think this sounds like the qualities you look for in a healthy relationship with a friend, co-worker, or significant other, you’re right. Branding is about talking to people on a foundational level, so that they feel safe and appreciated.

In fact, Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day, people won’t remember what you do or what you said, and they’ll remember how you made them feel.”

Prepare

So, let’s start with the first part of the brand – the promise. It tells them what you do, how you will help, and what you believe in as a company. It sets expectations for people. Consistency is key here, and Toyota’s first step with the new Supra. In the 1990s, Japanese car manufacturers set the bar for reliability and efficiency, and it became infamous for its fuel-guzzling four-cylinder engines and million-mile vehicles.

Toyota’s customer promise and expectations were then “reliable and efficient,” and the Mk4 Supra was a perfect fit. It’s a twin-turbo 2JZ engine that not only had decent mileage of power, but was also nearly indestructible. I remember watching videos and reading forums about enthusiasts getting reliable 800 to 1,000 horsepower from the iconic engine without upgrading anything inside the engine.

The Toyota Supra brand promised performance and reliability in 1998 and delivered too much. It also promised a legacy of racing heritage with Castrol and Denso Sard Supras collecting wins at the JGTC from 1993 and 2001.

That’s a lot of proven evidence provided by Toyota and Supra. But in 2019, Toyota decided to use an engine and chassis from a different manufacturer: BMW.

This communicates, whether true or not, that they cannot fulfill the expectations they set themselves. If you make a promise and then give the impression that you can’t or can’t follow through, there will be problems in the next step.

trust

Toyota earned the trust of the masses in the 1990s by offering reliable and efficient passenger cars. They beat performance enthusiasts with the Mk4’s venerable 2JZ-GTE engine. But now they have a problem. Customer surveys lead Toyota to the conclusion that the new Supra should have a six-cylinder engine.

They didn’t have one, so they decided to ask BMW if they could borrow the 3-liter twin-turbo engine. In fairness, choosing to outsource engineering and/or design resources is understandable, and companies do it all the time without your knowledge. Car manufacturers don’t make cars, they build platforms, which transform into multiple cars with different packing and trim levels. From 1991 to 2002, Toyota used the JZ platform to produce 17 vehicles around the world with similar engines and drive configurations, including the Mk4 Supra and Lexus SC300 in North America. It’s a big investment to produce a new car and engine from scratch, but this option to outsource the engine was the second biggest contributing factor to the new Supra’s mixed response.

By outsourcing the engine, Toyota inadvertently reported that it may not have the expertise or resources to reproduce its previous experience, resulting in a loss of trust with consumers. To avoid this loss, Toyota had to rely on other inboard platforms, such as Lexus. Customer surveys should be taken in spirit and not at face value.

The 2JZ-GTE engine wasn’t great, not because it was an inline-six, but because it was on the company’s branding as well as the Supra—reliable and efficient (Toyota) Sport (Supra). It would have been a much better brand and confidence building tool for both Toyota and Supra to use an inboard chassis platform. The LC500 would have been a great option, perhaps stuffed with a Lexus 3.5L V6 engine, which could easily have been persuaded to make 400+ hp with turbocharging.

Sure the all-Toyota-sourced Supra would have helped, but I don’t think that would have fixed all the problems. Which brings me to the last part of the brand, and what I think is the biggest stop with the new Supra.

affiliation

Affiliation is the most overlooked aspect of a brand. And if you neglect it, it will be more harmful in the long run. Affiliation is also the hardest to control, so many brands avoid this altogether. Let me prepare the script for you.

Although production of the previous Supra was discontinued in 1998 in North America, what happened in 2001 had more impact on the Supra brand than anything that had happened before. On June 18 of that year, I went with some friends to see The Fast and the Furious , a movie that would not only shape my view of car culture, but my American view as well. Over the next few years, my college friends and I spent our time and money modifying cars (with various results) and rewatching the DVD version countless times. The best part of the movie was watching Paul Walker’s character turn his junkyard Supra into the famous orange Ferrari killer. Supra undoubtedly influenced the modified culture greatly, unrealistic as portrayed in the film.

The economy was great in the early 2000s, and many performance stores and race teams across the country built businesses around the Supra and similar Japanese tuner cars. Titan Motorsports’ Supra drag racer has been described as the world’s fastest import, boasting more than 1,700 horsepower from a 2jz engine. I definitely don’t need 1,700 HP, but I’m still kicking myself for not buying that stock 1998 Twin Turbo Hardtop in 2004 for $25,000. I couldn’t buy the same car today for less than three times that amount.

The Supra still keeps a constant spot in my fantasy garage all the time to this day, with other cars I can’t afford, like the ’69 Chevelle SS and Ferrari F40. Apparently, nostalgia does not consume.

Don’t avoid customer experience

In all honesty, I don’t care about a Toyota, or a new Supra, or even an old one. What matters to me are the positive experiences and relationships I have built around them. A company can spend endless time and energy honing its mission, improving the product, and striving to create a consistent experience (Apple comes to mind), but it will always lose control once the consumer takes control of it. From that point on, all experiences belong to them. The bets are up.

The sad thing is that most companies are afraid and avoid including customer experience in their brand choices. Instead, they tell them what they want and how they should feel — with varied results. Sure, you’ll get people who will come back for the same experience, as long as it hasn’t changed drastically. But what if the experience turns out to be something bigger and better than what the owner originally intended?

Toyota took the one thing that made the Supra Supra, at least in the eyes of enthusiasts, and called that responsibility to BMW. In my opinion, they had to build the car on the LC500 platform (TNGA: GA-L) and make the real 700-horsepower car people wanted – which is exactly what Nissan did with the GT-R. This can’t be a financial decision, as they have to know that only a few thousand will be sold annually, especially if you look at the competitive numbers of competitors like the Corvette and 370Z.

In short: There is no true Supra without a 2JZ engine, and if Toyota has been paying attention at all in the last 20 years, they should have known. What they really should have known was the damage they could do to the Supra brand.

If you don’t want to make the same mistakes as Toyota, work with branding and marketing experts like those of us at the Karcher Group. Get in touch today to discuss your brand.