Branding lessons from Saturn

It was a sad day when GM announced last week that it was finally pulling the plug on Saturn. When the brand was launched, the company was carefully planned and its marketing orchestrated to create something dramatically different – and it worked (back in the early 90s, at least). What did Saturn do? And is there any way to apply those lessons to b-to-b companies? Here are 4 key steps Saturn took:

Customers are people too

In the world of B2B marketing, it’s frighteningly common to find a certain style of design, of communication, of interacting with potential customers. It goes something like this: In big, black, industrial sans-serif type, preferably Futura or Helvetica (or perhaps Gill Sans if we’re feeling frisky), we shout . . .