Hummer's Advertising Strategy

Building the Hummer brand
General Motors’ Hummer division was launched in 1991 with the introduction of the $150,000 H1 über sport utility vehicle based on the US military’s HUMVEE vehicle that replaced the Jeep in 1979. Almost 15 years later, Hummer has added the $50,000 H2 model, and is set to unveil the $30,000 H3 this summer.

With only 3 vehicles in its line-up, Hummer has worked very hard at cultivating a brand image among auto manufacturers that is similar to Harley-Davidson among motorcycles, one that is niche, hard-core, known for quality, and not for everyone. Despite the fact that sticker prices have made owning a Hummer a status symbol, with H1 model owners more likely to be rappers in New York City than Rocky Mountain off-road enthusiasts, Hummer’s ads cater exclusively to the latter audience focusing on off-road performance and the manufacturing testing that leads to this performance ability.

Currently, Hummer only advertises one of the three models, the H2. This will probably change once the H3 is released, but they currently have no ads (that I could locate) for the H1, elevating it to sports car status with the customers-must-seek-us-out mentality. Despite this, Hummer wants the public to view its brand as rugged, capable, and powerful.

TV, print, and internet advertising
Hummer only runs a comprehensive ad campaign for it’s H2 model, with the H1 regulated to it’s website, and the H3 just beginning to show up in ads (with the sole message being affordability). The H2 ads are all about rugged off-road performance, no matter what medium the ads appear in. The tagline “Hummer, Like Nothing Else,” appears throughout these ads and aptly illustrates the message Hummer is trying to convey to its audience.

The TV ads almost exclusively show the H2 in desolate, off-road environments either bounding over boulders in the mountains, powering up steep inclines to get to a campsite, or speeding through snowy wastelands in Antarctica. One of the company’s most popular spots according to medialifemagazine.com (and the most memorable to me personally) was the “Happy Jack” ad that first appeared during the Super Bowl in January 2003. Set to The Who song Happy Jack, the spot opens with a young boy carefully crafting a Hummer go-cart in his garage. As the boy arrives at the starting line for a go-cart race with other children, his competition smirks at his large, clunky Hummer as they sit smugly in brightly painted replicas of sports cars. When the race starts, the Hummer is quickly beaten off the starting line by the faster Ferrari replicas, but veers off the road and down a steep countryside hill beating the faster carts to the finish line as the crowd cheers him on. The commercial never shows an actual H2, but tows the company line of off-road performance very effectively.

The print ads appear frequently in men’s magazines like Maxim, Sports Illustrated, and Details, and are offshoots of the TV ads, usually pictures of the H2 in action in an off-road environment. The picture quality is excellent in these full page spots, showcasing the vehicle in various positions (i.e. one wheel off the ground as it leaps over a rocky outcrop), and I have seen them collected and taped like mini-posters to dorm room walls almost with the frequency of the Absolute Vodka ads. Here again, Hummer builds its brand as a quality off-road performer.

The internet ads are usually seen in banners surrounding the pages of sites like ESPN.com and CNNSI.com. The banners convey movement to the audience and are usually developed in Flash, showing the H2 in action for a moment before zooming in on the Hummer badge and directing the audience to the website. Again, the off-road message is hammered home, but these ads tend to be more informative with messages touting changes in model features that can be found at Hummer.com.

Through these mediums, Hummer has found an advertising campaign that works, seldom veers from their message of off-road capability, and is stylistically appealing outside its customer base.

Website uses
The promotion of www.hummer.com is evident in the TV, print, and online ads as the message “visit hummer.com” appears somewhere during or on the ad no matter what the medium used. Hummer uses their website much like other manufactures, by having a dealer locator, build your vehicle function, and a great deal of information on off-road performance. But there is a large part of their website devoted to merchandise that is not typically found at other auto sites. Hummer’s ads most likely have contributed to the popularity of the merchandise since most of the world can’t afford to own a vehicle (although this is changing), but admire the brand for the image that it holds. As the vehicle line up expands, so should the website, I’d recommend adding some of the pricing and financing features that Ford has to the site. But overall, Hummer.com is effective and consistent with the image their ads promote.

Improvement suggestions
Overall, Hummer does an excellent job reaching its target audience. I think the psychology of ads work to appeal to the off-road enthusiast in all of us rather than focusing on real, off-roaders. The majority of people who buy Hummers may have the image in their heads of racing up a mountain trail, but the majority of Hummers will never leave the streets. Hummer appeals to the everyman in that the ads focus on styling and potential, they do not give details like axel strength, for example, that only the enthusiast would appreciate. The facts that Hummers have become status symbols and are highly recognizable vehicles work towards these principles.

Where I have doubts is in the direction of the ad campaign for the H3, touting affordability as the main selling feature. Hummer fans already lament watering-down the brand with less capable, more mainstream vehicles. They fear that the Hummer name will become comparable to Jeep, where what started as a niche brand committed to off-road performance has become the soccer-mom standard that you see a dozen times or more on the road just during your morning commute. Fans’ fears are further increased by Hummer’s recent announcement to release an H4 model in 2007 designed to compete with the Jeep Wrangler.

Hummer may lose the image they have successfully marketed through their ad campaigns not by any marketing change in message, but through product growth and expansion. Right now they seem to be doing everything perfectly to promote their brand, but as their products change, their message will change. In fact, it has already started—they’ve linked a word to their image that was once blasphemy at Hummer: affordability.