My background is in psychology, not marketing, but the way I see it, there are two potential marketing goals from racing: brand awareness and brand image.
In terms of brand awareness, no news is bad news. Just getting people talking about a brand increases brand awareness. Why is this important? Because familiarity with something automatically increases the value we place on it. This is known as
the “mere exposure effect” (or the “familiarity principle”). So Nissan fielding a weird car works great here. And, indeed, it
doesn’t have to do well, since we’re not after anything except making headlines and getting people talking. Even a failure can be advantageous here, as long as it’s a failure that gets talked about.
In terms of brand image, though, we’re working with different phenomena. Here, we don’t just want people talking, we want them talking about the right things. We’re looking to associate the Nissan, NISMO, and GT-R names in people’s minds with at least two things: racing and success. Note that this doesn’t just apply to the demographic that will buying the Nissan GT-R. Halo cars like the GT-R (or the Corvette) produce a
halo effect that extends down to lowly vehicles like the Sentra (or Chevy’s latest incarnation of the Cavalier/Cobalt/whatever). If we like the GT-R but we’re too poor (or responsible
) to buy one, we might still be more inclined to buy a Nissan because of the halo effect. Similarly, if we like racing and we’re impressed with Nissan’s performance at Le Mans, we like the brand more. When we go to answer the question of “what car should I buy?”, we’re more apt to answer “a Nissan” if we like Nissan or associate Nissan with attributes we either identify with (e.g., racing or success) or if we like the brand, whatever the context.
So here’s where we (or Nissan, really) can run into issues. Does having a
losing car at Le Mans help the brand? In terms of brand awareness, sure. People are talking about Nissan, so that’s good. In terms of brand imagine, though, that’s enormously less clear. On the one hand, people talking about Nissan in the context of racing. So now the brains of people exposed to this news are somewhat more likely to associate “Nissan” (and “NISMO” and “GT-R”) with the concept of “racing.” That’s good. But if the car, and the brand, are being associated with ideas like “slow,” “unreliable,” and “failure,” that
doesn’t help. Doubly so because now the race car isn’t just associated with Nissan, it’s also associated with some of their trademarks: NISMO and GT-R.
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