• by Karl Greenberg , January 2, 2009

Dreadful. This may be the first "Marketer of the Year" story ever written that begins with that word. But this is the first year in maybe forever (or at least since Warren G. Harding was president) that has been, for marketers, dreadful. Especially auto marketers. Yet a few bucked the trend. Subaru was one. That is quite an accomplishment for a mid-market brand with a limited vehicle portfolio and marketing clout.

Considering its budget, which is less than some automakers spend on a single vehicle launch, it's surprising that Subaru was able to stay afloat at all--and do it without offering huge discounts.

Actually, the Cherry Hill, N.J. company has always been something of an anomaly in the U.S. car business: standard features like all-wheel-drive and an airplane-style boxer engine make for great rally racers, but tend to focus sales in the snow states.

But the brand, perhaps better known as the wagon of choice for the progressive set, is also in the unusual position of being a non-luxury brand that appeals to those who can afford a Mercedes or BMW.

And this year, the company has also increased sales. Granted, 1% for the year through November would not be striking in, say, 2002--but this year it is. The company did not see the kind of massive losses that others experienced.

With automotive industry sales down 35% in November, Subaru's minus-8% performance looks damned good--something like a positive 27%. The company also exited November with 1.9% share of the U.S. market--almost an all-time record, according to Kevin Mayer, director of marketing: "So we are nipping at VW and Mazda."

And the company's most recent launch--the 2009 Forester, which won Motor Trend's "SUV of the Year"--saw a 64% increase in sales, a record for November. So far this year, Forester sales are up 34%.

In addition, sales of the company's Subaru Impreza gained 4% in November and are up 10% so far this year. Sales of the Subaru Legacy sedan are up 9% through the year, although sales of the car were off 15% in November. The company says Impreza, Forester and Legacy are all heading for best-ever annual sales.

Tim Mahoney, who left Subaru in the 1990s to be general manager at Porsche, then returned as senior vice president and chief marketing officer in 2006, says the brand's stable performance this year reflects changes the company has implemented over the past three years. "We are now seeing dividends from building the right team," he says. "When I came back we had no director of corporate communications--or of advertising and marketing communications--so we made structural changes and rebuilt, just like rebuilding a sports team."

Mahoney also brought over from Porsche the practice of holding universal agency briefings. "Often, companies brief individually, so everyone gets a slightly different story, like the party game where you whisper a secret from one person to another and by the time it gets around the circle the secret is completely different." The universal agency briefing, he explains, allows the company to share priorities and its comparatively limited marketing resources.

Mahoney also switched Subaru's creative and media account to Minneapolis-based agency Carmichael Lynch, which had been Porsche's agency until the Atlanta luxury marque shifted creative and media to Chicago-based Cramer-Krasselt.

In 2006 came a new brand umbrella campaign, "It's What Makes a Subaru, a Subaru," that focused first on product attributes and then on the brand's core values around active driving, engineering excellence, environmentalism and safety.

"One of the most interesting things is that the brand is as much about customers as it is about products," says Kevin Mayer, Subaru's director of marketing. The company started a new market-message strategy called "beaconing" that illustrates the brand's values by talking about owners. "We went back to the customer and started thinking again about their values and how our values are like theirs. We dialed in our strategies back to core."

Mayer says Subaru owners are experience-seekers--"the types who collect experiences rather than things; they tend to be very environmentally aware and socially involved."

Subaru's approach is reflected in a current spot for Forester running through year's end that tells a story of four brothers who go every year to the easternmost point of Maine to watch the sun come up. "It comes from a really honest place about who they are," says Mayer.

The company launched the 2009 Forester in late April with a "Love Letters Viral Video" campaign and followed up with TV spots for Forester, Impreza and Outback at national, regional, and dealer levels (or, per Subaru nomenclature, "heart, brain and wallet").

And while the temptation surely was to go with the flow last fall and do deal ads, the company used its beaconing strategy to offer another kind of incentive. The "Share the Love" campaign allowed customers to select one of five charities to receive a $250 donation from the company following the purchase or lease of a new vehicle.

Subaru has also quadrupled online ad spend, and is engaged in both a new dealer Web site system and a full-scale brand Web redesign that will make the site contextual--meaning that visitors will be served content based on where they have been, what they have looked at, and what their interests are.