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These days, Rich Cortright is one of a very few auto dealers who stands in his showroom with a genuine smile on his face. Located in the well-heeled village of [...]

Joe Driver from Toledo has decided it's finally time for a new car: that all-wheel drive Pontiac Torrent he's been eyeing for months. Fortunately, he's got his down-payment and, like [...]

Like silent sentries on watch, a Saturn Outlook and the GMC Acadia--both fresh from the paint shop and wearing slick coats of gleaming white--guard the front lot of General Motors' [...]

Fontana, Calif. -- It is a scorching Labor Day weekend on the eve of the Sony HD 500 Nascar race, and the vast infield RV campground of the California Speedway [...]

THE WORLD OF TED WARD IS INHABITED BY CAVEMEN, talking lizards and normal-sized people living in homes with four-foot ceilings. But that's nothing unusual for Ward, who, at 56, is [...]

If, as some have argued, the secret to securing U.S. market share in the auto industry was to simply build a good-looking car, Toyota would be out of luck. Take [...]

WHEN MARKETING FOR THE new Ford F-150 begins on Nov. 2, it will be with a 'big bang' and play to millions. The effort, one of Ford's biggest in recent [...]

IT IS A GOOD TIME to be McCormick spices. While not the sexiest of brands, 'The taste you trust' is positioned extremely well for an economy that looks to be [...]

BUICK MAY WANT TO CLEAR OUT some rooms at the 'old age' auto brand rest home. Lexus is coming. The average age of the Lexus shopper is 54, just a [...]

WHEN YOU HAVE A product created for tight wallets, now is the time to make sure everyone knows about it. So Kia, armed with a coterie of gas sippers and [...]

THE DETROIT THREE'S muscle cars are going on a diet, and may even lay off the weights for a while. Case in point: When Chrysler and General Motors announced the [...]

AMIDST THE HAND wringing over gas prices and environmental correctness, a new label in auto marketing has finally reached acceptability: crossover. The crossover has replaced the long-dead 'station wagon,' the [...]

Henry Ford famously said something to the effect of, 'Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it's black.' Today, Scott Mellin, CEO [...]

LOCAL PAPERS MAY BE yesterday's news for some advertisers, however college newspapers are thriving, per a new study. Alloy Media+Marketing, New York, found that 82% of students read their campus [...]

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT can't control runaway gas prices, but automakers apparently can. As the price at the pump eclipses $4 in many areas, Chrysler, Suzuki and Kia have refined a [...]

EWASTE MANAGEMENT HAS gone from being a headache to a marketing tool. Electronics manufacturers and retailers are attempting to address the problem and give themselves a green halo by encouraging [...]

SCOTT KEOGH CMO AUDI AT THE NORTH AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL AUTO SHOW, three weeks before the Super Bowl, Scott Keogh was receiving members of the press with a smug aplomb, not [...]

CARMAKERS ARE FINDING they have a new rival for online ads: dealers. Now that auto dealers are finally embracing the Internet, popular third-party sites like Edmunds.com and Cars.com are the [...]

The idea: Pennzoil has used its yellow motor oil container as a brand builder since the company bunched under the Pennzoil name in 1963, with Arnold Palmer as one of [...]

THOUGH SALES FOR THE BRAND have tarnished recently, Scion is treating its limited edition xB like gold--literally. The Toyota unit this week is dispatching three-member street teams in 10 cities [...]

We've always loved avant-garde music, from the swooning industrial sounds of Einsttirzende Neubauten to the clanging attack of Neptune (not to mention the soulful street sermons delivered by Fat Albert's [...]

LAST FALL, DAVID NORDSTROM was walking the floor of an auto show in Frankfurt, Germany, when he had an epiphany. The vp of marketing for Lexus realized that his competitors [...]

IN February 2009, the FCC will shut off the analog broadcast signal and switch to digital. With the finish line in sight, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Jan. [...]

IN AN EFFORT TO ENERGIZE the momentum of its best sales year since 2004, Mitsubishi Motors North America this week will launch a brand campaign with a new tag, 'It's [...]

We all want to know what it's like, sitting in your fishing boat trolling for tuna in the blue waters off the coast of Southern California, retired at 60. Boring, [...]

Being 'square' has always been what Scion is about. Literally. Its four-cornered roadster, the xB, hit the U.S. market in 2004 as a boxy five-door aimed at arty young buyers--the [...]

When she took the job as senior vp of marketing at the Speed channel, Lila Everett didn't know that the brand's moniker was literal in terms of job duties. She [...]

While designer appliance makers such as LG and Samsung beg us to trade up to their sleek, stainless steel wares and ditch our dowdy dryers and dull dishwashers, the executives [...]

LG ELECTRONICS WILL ask consumers to dump their old appliances, not because they don't work but because they're not as stylish as LG's wares. The $20 million effort, breaking this [...]

STRUGGLING AUTOMAKER Volkswagen is in talks to hire Jan Thompson, the veteran auto marketer let go by Nissan last month, as its CMO. Thompson told Brandweek she is in negotiations [...]

The grounds of Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Ill., were blanketed in BMW's traditional white, chrome and light gray--whether it was the dressing on course fences, the [...]

FIRST PEPSI BROUGHT BACK the Pepsi Challenge (for Diet Pepsi), now Hyundai is borrowing a page from the same playbook. Better known as a maker of more affordable autos, Hyundai [...]

At a time of growing public concern over energy use and the environment, oil company executives may want to take cover where their product comes from--underground. With barrel prices brushing [...]

He's not as lonely, and is a bit more industrious these days, but the Maytag repairman is alive and well in a tongue-in-cheek TV spot for the new Epic washer [...]

ACCORDING TO AN OLD saying: 'It's not about the destination, it's about the journey.' BMW has translated that in a new campaign that features its performance driving school rather than [...]

MICROSOFT WANTS CONSUMERS to know it's not just about Xbox 360. Aiming to move its Games for Windows out of that poorly lit neighborhood at the back of big-box retail [...]

MINI USA IS USING its size to its advantage once more with a TV campaign breaking this week that touts the small car's fuel efficiency. The effort, via Butler, Shine, [...]

WITH SALES DOWN and its marketing strategy in flux, who would want to be Volkswagen these days? Kia, apparently. The Korean automaker has poached some of VW's top marketers, some [...]

THANKS IN PART to the rise of female consumers, safe is happening to more and more automakers. According to studies from R.L. Polk and J.D. Power and Associates, about a [...]

HONDA'S EXPERIMENT with Environmentology appears to be over. Sage Marie, a Honda rep, said the green-themed campaign, which was introduced last fall via agency RPA, Los Angeles, will be phased [...]

For all the talk about the automobile industry's marketing move to the Web and its over-reliance on key prime-time media buys, the networks can take heart in the knowledge that [...]

When British Petroleum realized in the late '90s that being a major oil player by itself wasn't an image-builder, it decided to go green (insofar as an oil company can) [...]

EVENT MARKETING No $ Limit IMAGINE A LOS ANGELES without cars, courtesy of Infiniti. When The History Channel set out to create extra awareness among the younger set last summer, [...]

Women are a major influence when it comes to purchasing a family vehicle. But the car care aftermarket targeting them seems to be lagging behind. In what is beheved to [...]

Toyota's dismal showing in its Nascar Nextel Cup Series debut Feb. 18 anguished some folks at the automaker's Torrance, Calif., headquarters, but its strident critics were celebrating at www.fansagainst racingtoyotas.com [...]

Cheril Hendry might be considered the Fix-It Doctor for auto dealerships. While she handles many brands, one strategy last year in particular helped a General Motors unit flourish in Japanese [...]

The recent Pfizer layoffs in Ann Arbor, Mich., stirred anger first, then creativity. Some of the estimated 2,700 laid-off locals pondered, 'How can we best let that pharma giant know [...]

FORD, WHICH HAS one of the lowest auto industry penetration rates among 25-35-year-olds, will make a play for the demo this week with video podcasts featuring alternative music acts. The [...]

Saab last week became the latest brand to be accused of cloaking, the practice of rigging search engines to get a higher ranking. Wil Reynolds, founder of Seer Inter active, [...]

PSST, THE 2007 KIA RONDO is available. Not that the Korean automaker wants you to know or anything. In a move that one auto analyst dubbed 'bizarre,' Kia has released [...]