Cadillac’s New Marketing Strategy Focuses On “Un-selling”

cadillac showroom marketing strategy

Whenever we think about car dealerships, we imagine old school car salesmen hounding customers to buy, buy, and buy some more. These traditional marketing strategies that, in the past, resulted in a sell, sell, sell, are not effective as they once were. Today, many brands are ditching traditional marketing tactics and are turning to interactive spaces to better connect with their consumers. Cadillac is the latest example of how “un-selling” is becoming the new sales and marketing tactic to get consumers to buy. With the creation of the Cadillac House, Cadillac has mastered the art of consumer engagement.

Cadillac House Is Not Designed to Sell Cars

“Our challenge is to make it so that someone can actually see themselves in a Cadillac,” said Melody Lee, Cadillac’s director of brand marketing. She went on to say, “To do that, they have to find the brand relevant to their lifestyle. Being relevant means being culturally relevant. Customers already are interested in art and film and fashion, and this is intended to make it easier for them to have their interests intersect with the Cadillac brand.”

Designed to be a permanent space highlighting the brand’s intersection between art, fashion, and design, Cadillac wanted to create the ultimate user experience. The 12,000-sf ground floor space of the company’s New York SoHo headquarters, houses a coffee shop, art gallery, and fashion pop-up shop. Placed between all three features of the venue are new Cadillac cars and SUVs.

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As a way to keep their new interactive space relevant, the Cadillac House will rotate artists in its art gallery section. The first artist will be Geoffrey Lillemon, creative director on Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz World Tour.

Up and coming fashion designers will also be able to sell their clothing at the Cadillac’s pop-up shop, Retail Lab, launching this July. The Retail Lab serves to support Cadillac and the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s (CDFA) mentoring and merchandising program. The program helps facilitate real-world experience for designers; in this case, the Retail Lab will be the designer’s facilitator.

“We’re giving designers the opportunity to take their businesses to the next level,” Lee said. “It’s one thing to slap a logo on a banner and call it a sponsorship. This lets us actually sponsor people to do daring things and take risks that they might not otherwise have the means to take.”

Cadillac’s focus on creating an interactive user experience shares how the traditional hard sell is not enough anymore. By eliminating the traditional push marketing strategy, Cadillac has curated a successful pull strategy that resonates with their consumers. Hopefully, their new campaign translates to an increase in revenue.

When it opens in June 2016, the Cadillac house will host events and vehicle exhibitions through a partnership with the CFDA and the art magazine Visionaire.

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