• by Karl Greenberg , August 14, 2007

Mitsubishi Motors North America is launching its first sales even since late 1995, but the effort also doubles as a national branding effort promoting the company's rally-racing heritage, with the theme, "The Mitsubishi Time to Rally Event."

The effort, via BBDO, puts ads on national cable television, national sports programming and spot market TV. There will also be radio, online and dealership point-of-purchase components.

It comprises TV, print and online ads, and POP material in dealerships and includes a retail call-to-action highlighting special sales incentives offered on all Mitsubishi vehicles, airing in target markets on today.

The company has also redesigned its home page, mitsubishicars.com, to have an animated splash page featuring Mitsubishi's Outlander compact SUV, 2008 Lancer compact sport sedan and 2008 Eclipse sport coupe.

The effort, with the tag line "Time to Rally," pitches vehicle incentives while touting Mitsubishi's record 12-win race history in the Dakar Rally, a harrowing North African off-road desert race ending in Dakar, Senegal. Mitsubishi took first, second and fifth place this year. Ads have Lancer, Outlander and Eclipse sliding in with a Mitsubishi-red background.

The last such effort was a "Holiday Thrills" event in late 2005. Matt Mendez, retail advertising manager, says that this time around Mitsubishi worked with its dealer association to create a top-down campaign integrated with national advertising designed to avoid having a seasonal tagline.

"We worked closely with the national advisory board to make it fully integrated with national advertising, logos and unique radio spots, as well as several tiers of TV, including national and cable. All will support this event," he says.

In addition to its new sponsorship of the Arena Football League, the company is advertising during pre-season NFL on CBS throughout the year, with ads this month carrying the event message. "And we have an additional layer of spot TV in 24 volume markets," says Mendez.

"Obviously, the first thing you think of with sales events is generic running footage of vehicles. We counseled with the national [dealer] advisory aboard and decided we didn't want to pull away from the awareness we were starting to build for vehicles like Lancer, Eclipse and Outlander.

"They didn't want to stop those efforts, so BBDO was able to tie the name of the event into Mitsubishi's brand equity in rally racing," he says, adding that the company didn't want to make the effort reflect the season--e.g., summer sales event--so the effort could be cranked up again when needed.

"We can bring this back the way Honda does with its Mr. Opportunity efforts." Current rotation of ads for Outlander and Eclipse will also be tagged with the "Time to Rally" creative signature, so that at end of commercials a car slides in on a red background to show incentive offers.

Mitsubishi actually started promoting its Rally heritage in ads for the 2008 Lancer earlier this year. They show a man driving around a cloverleaf, with a message that the car was inspired by Mitsubishi rally racing. The company isn't alone in pitching its rally-racing heritage. Subaru has used its association with the X Games rally racing to promote its Impreza WRX car.

"It is something we are subtly placing in advertising. It's not household motorsport, by any sense of the word, but it definitely is growing and becoming more mainstream, particularly with the X-Games," says Mendez.

Mitsubishi is recovering from a near-death experience. In 2005, the company saw margins vanish and sales plummet as it was forced to abandon a strategy of selling Mitsubishi to credit-challenged customers. Sales are up 17% year to date, versus last year. Lancer sales last month were up 51% versus the month last year, and 96% year to date. Outlander sales are up 176% year to date.

"The mood is as positive as I've seen it," says Mendez. "I was at the Arena Bowl in New Orleans with dealers. And they were, collectively, excited about the year they have had, with consistent year-over-year increases. So things are moving in the right direction."