IMC plays a very important role in the automobile sales, analyzing its role in success of MAZDA. We must consider its use in Mazda Protégé and MAZDA6. Mazda was selling cars and trucks heavily in US market with their perfect styling, performance, reliability and value. In an attempt to compete with HONDA, NISSAN, and TOYOTA, company have introduced five new models in less than a year that resulted in a lack of focus in the
company’s marketing and advertising plans. To recover from this loss,
company haschanged their advertising agency to W.B. Doner & Co. Doner had to reposition the cars,on this note The Protégé had been positioned as a car that was a step up from a compactsedan but retained compact attributes such as fuel efficiency and price. New advertisingstrategy for the Protégé called for positioning it as a cool, fun and hip to drive vehicle for young, individualistic females who are in their early 20-30 years of age, with the focus oneuro-chic styling, room for friends, value, reliability, and cool features of the car. Doner developed several television commercials including computer generated background withlive action. Mazda also gave the redesigned Protegé a major push on the Internet. Mazda
kicked off what it called “the world’s largest online automotive launch party” with
banner ads on a number of web sites and portals such as Yahoo!, Excite, America
Online’s Autocenter, CarPoint, and MTV.
Mazda also mailed a CD-ROM with music,movie reviews and interviews to people who requested more information while visitingthe Protégé web site. The IMC program was extended to dealer showrooms bydeveloping point-of-purchase cubes that used the same imagery and tonality as thetelevision and print messages. This effective IMC plan worked well with protégé andshowed increase on sales by 33 % with increase of costumer perception on MAZDA asquality, reliability The advertising strategy for the MAZDA6 departed from the approach used for the
Protégé, as it involved what the company describes as a “more mature” effort that is
designed to position the car as a refined, sporty one Zoom Zoom line. TV spots and printads focused on attributes such as styling, performance and handling with each calling outmechanical features like zero-loss brake boosters, double-cone synchronizers and/or the car's double wishbone suspension. Promotion strategy spent heavily on IMC with 12% of their budget, Promotions were done in magazines, newspaper, they also had a deal with ESPN which includes advertising Mazda ESPN's various media such as, print , TV, radio and internet as well asin ESPN zone restaurant. It also integrates the Mazda6 into various promotions such as ESPN's "Pigskin Pick'Em" game. MAZDA6 also includes an extensive publicity ralations campaign, direct mail. and the use of interactive media such as online advertising CD-ROMs, with which model was named as 10 best cars in the year 2003