• by Karl Greenberg , September 1, 2011

Cadillac unveiled its new concept car, the Ciel (French for "sky"), in Pebble Beach last week and this week showed the resplendent cabriolet on the rooftop of a Chelsea studio. The car, whose design was inspired by the California Coast, has a long profile that belies that fact that it is actually shorter than the DTS, which will soon go away.

Don Butler, VP marketing at the General Motors division, said the car is an "exploration" about what consumers want -- i.e., a high-end Cadillac to vie against cars like Mercedes' S-Class. "We want to see if something of this size and stature makes sense for us as a brand," he said.

But the Ciel road show is also about where the brand itself is going -- and, per Butler, how it is going to "right-size" the portfolio. Using a PowerPoint slide of Starbucks cups, he demonstrated that the current Caddie car lineup of the mid-size CTS and the large DTS and STS large-car combo (like a grande and two ventis) will be replaced by the ATS BMW 3-Series fighter, the CTS, and the XTS large sedan, a more balanced order that makes CTS the fulcrum of the car lineup. The XTS and ATS are coming next year, as is a new version of the SRX crossover with over 300 horses, and an electric car, to be called ELR.

Butler said the XTS sedan will be defined by "comfort, connectedness and control." Of the smaller ATS, he said three words define it: nimble, quick and fun. "Don't even think Catera," he said. "It's fun performance -- a new territory for us."

On the marketing front, he said motor sports (the company is racing a version of the CTS-V in the SCCA World Challenge circuit) will become even more important. "We will be marketing around individual sports like racing, skiing and golf. And we are going to be bold and provocative in our marketing to talk about things we have done that make Cadillac a Cadillac."

A new Cadillac TV spot shows a Ferrari on a racetrack that asks: "Did Cadillac borrow from Ferrari" (the camera pulls back to reveal that the Ferrari is running behind a CTS-V) "or did Ferrari borrow from Cadillac?" The ad makes the point that Ferrari uses magnetic ride control pioneered by Cadillac.

Also in preparation for the new cars, Cadillac is revamping dealerships and service. Said Butler: "We have asked dealers and partners to get their houses ready. This is a huge facility upgrade and enhancement program."

Global Marketing Chief Joel Ewanick made statements to Bloomberg this week that he wanted to see a revamp of both Chevrolet and Cadillac marketing communications. Butler tells Marketing Daily that any changes to advertising would be incremental. "We are very happy with (AOR) Fallon and we have a continuum challenge in terms of making the brand relevant for consumers. But it's not as if there's this headlong mission and all of the sudden we have woken up and said, 'We have to make a change -- we have to do something different.'"

Cadillac has tended to focus on V-Series cars (Cadillac's factory-tuned, high-performance models) in advertising, a strategy that Butler says uses V-Series as a halo that has worked to bring people into showrooms. "It helps and enhances the overall brand. We have been quite happy with the track of the brand in terms of opinion and consideration, and both are rising," he says, "partly because we are advertising the V-Series. They aren't high volume but they build the image of the overall brand, and we are bringing consumers into showrooms because they have seen that vehicle."

That focus on V-Series will diminish as the portfolio expands, per Butler. Cadillac has, for instance, launched a new spot that features the SRX crossover and that demonstrates a new braking technology wherein if the car has been in wet conditions, the brake calipers lightly skim water off of the rotors to improve stopping power.

"We are talking about things that make Cadillac unique," he says. "So we go from this image and concept about what Cadillac can and should be -- luxury in a dynamic sense, an emotional sense -- and then we move down to vehicle-level specifics about what makes this vehicle so special."