Buick Motor Division
Christian Landry
MKT 421
Dr. Audrey Ellison
December 10, 2014

Buick Motor Division When a car company sells to people of an average age of 65 to 74, they begin to realize that they are missing the edge on marketing to a large of the population. Buick has been trying to appeal to younger buyers for years, but not until a recent marketing change has brought any success to the organization. Analyzing the marketing mix of Buick will show how they've concentrated on the four P's to bring new life into the company through new marketing ideas. Buick is focusing on their product, promotion, price and place, to change the marketing strategy for the company to bring them closer to their competition (Perreault, 2014). For Buick to look at their future marketing strategy, they had to analyze what has happened previously to figure out how to make the company successful now and in the future. The four P's that Buick is using for their marketing mix are being adjusted until the exact combination is found that meets the needs of their customers. Buick's primary objective is to appeal as a cool company that is up to date and can compete with the high-end car companies. The cars that Buick is producing in their new approach include turbocharged sports sedans and a compact crossover (Bond Jr, 2014). These models are being built to compete in the growing market for cars with power and also smaller vehicles with good gas mileage. Their promotion tactics are expanding as well, focusing energy on social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Vines; guaranteeing that a high percentage of younger age groups will see their advertising. The price marks for their entire line of vehicles are affordable for the quality of the product; encompassing an array of innovative options for their consumers. Since one of their marketing platforms is golf, Buick has sponsored three major golf tournaments, generating the potential for an enormous amount of new customers. Buick is taking deliberate changes to bring their company into a new era of marketing. Their company was stuck in a cycle of appealing to an older crowd; producing bulky vehicles that earned the nicknames of “boats” or “old man cars”. This was prior to Buick hiring their new marketing director, Sandra Moore. Sandra is giving new life to the Buick brand by implementing new advertising direction that doesn't try to target one particular age group. Instead, they are taking a comedic approach and ridiculing their company's prior efforts to reach new consumers. The commercials show a medley of confused people, varying in age, who don't believe that the car they are looking at is actually a Buick, mainly because it is so attractive and they all say “That’s not a Buck” (Colias, 2014). This clever insult to the past is geared to making consumers give the new Buick products another look. Not only is Buick changing its image as an innovative company that can appeal to younger generations, but it is exploring new avenues to get the message across. That new path is social media, which can reach more people than if they were to use prior conventional marketing strategies. Platforms like YouTube and Vines allow for users to view their vehicles in motion as they can share among users. Sharing between