Lincoln-Mercury’s website is a good symbol for what is happening to the automaker.
The Lincoln side is black, the Mercury side is white, and the two are divided evenly down the middle of the screen. Offline, Lincoln is trying to redefine its brand as a contemporary luxury auto manufacturer, a few notches above the more mid-range Mercury.
Lincoln is going to “raise the bar,” said Mark Hutchins, president of Lincoln-Mercury, an Irvine-base unit of Ford Motor Co. He said he is trying to separate the two car lines, concentrating on Lincoln for three to four years, then will come back and rebuild the Mercury brand.
Lincoln has a new head designer, Gerry McGovern, who came from the design team at Land Rover. McGovern said he is “totally obsessed with precision” in the new branding efforts.
He said there are three types of luxury, two of which he wants to keep from Lincoln. The first being a “money is everything” or “Las Vegas American luxury,” McGovern said. The second is a “Eurocentric” luxury, which comes from the Old World and is aristocratic “like the Ritz-Carlton.” McGovern said. Instead, he wants Lincoln to fit into contemporary American luxury, which he says is a relaxed, confident luxury, “for one’s self.”
The foundation for the new stance is the current LS, whose target customer age is the mid-40s.
Lincoln’s branding efforts are also making their way into the dealerships with its Premier Experience program, which recommends that its dealers step up a notch on their appearance, service and sales strategies.
Jim Rogers, VP of marketing and brand management for Lincoln, said he wants Lincoln dealers to stop using sales gags like “We’re dealin’,” and “overstocked” or selling distressed vehicles at lower prices.
The dealers are also recommended to improve the quality of the dress of its employees.
Over time, Lincoln want the dealers to improve the interior and exterior of the dealerships as well.
For participating in the program, and meeting requirements, the Lincoln dealership employees will get a 2.5% cash bonus, a company investment program and discounts on vehicles.
Hutchins and his staff recently met with all of the Lincoln dealers to announce the program and said the reaction was mixed. Hutchins said that there have been several dealers that have been asking for a program similar to this for years.
Other dealers are worried they will have to sacrifice profits for the program. “Anytime you throw changes out there, people get nervous,” said Lincoln-Mercury spokesman, Jim Trainor.
The program is not mandatory, and Hutchins said the recommendations could be easily met by all dealerships.
The new branding goes hand in hand with Lincoln-Mercury’s move to OC. “We had to get away from the Detroit mindset,” he said. “we are thinking differently.”
Lincoln-Mercury moved its sales and marketing operations to Irvine in 1998, and broke ground this month on it’s the new headquarters. The company plans to bring some of its design and engineering team out from Detroit after the facility is complete and will try to move more Lincoln staff to OC thereafter.
Lincoln hopes to have its engineering and design staff in OC by 2005.
And Ford will also bring Land Rover to OC, putting it into the PAG along with Aston Martin, Jaguar, Volvo and Lincoln. But problems in Land Rover deal are holding up the sale. “I don’t know about Land Rover right now,” Hutchins said. n
