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According to industry analyst Steve Saxty, the first automobile "brand-scape"
appeared in England in the early 1990s. Rover launched its concept showroom
in Reading, a town Saxty calls the "demographic vanilla of the UK"--and
the space was successful. The company rolled out others across Britain,
including one in a busy commuter-rail station in London. "People enjoyed
them but ultimately found them frustrating," he says, "because
the showrooms didn't sell cars." At the same time Lexus launched a
brand center in Tokyo, which encountered similar problems. "The visitor
centers provided a great warm-and-fuzzy experience that primed the customer
to buy the cars, but there was a disconnect between showroom and dealers."
"We get half a million visitors a year," Toyota's Le Paire boasts.
But when asked if those numbers translate into actual sales, his voice gets
quiet and he chuckles nervously. "Obviously that's the key question.
When you do not sell anything, how can you measure the success of such a
marketing tool?" It's virtually impossible to get feedback from the
dealer network, he says. Instead, every six months Toyota undertakes surveys,
measuring success by the number of repeat visitors the brand-scape gets.
The showroom runs weekly kids activity programs, for which parents sign
up in advance. Despite the apparent calm in the Lexus Lounge, Le Rendez-Vous
Toyota is noisy and crowded. Children with moms in tow run through the showroom
between computer terminals and science experiments.
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Because the Renault showroom, also on the Champs-Elysées
(left), is open from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day and the restaurant
(right) serves three-course meals, Parisians are lured in.
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They sit in Bertoia wire chairs (left) and custom-made Hammoutene
armchairs (right) on catwalks above the showroom floor.
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Downstairs in L'Atelier Renault, a man scrutinizes Nourget's Rainbow chair.
Then he turns toward a gleaming Avantime in the middle of the room and shrugs:
the link between chair and car isn't apparent--and Renault never spells
it out. At the end of its first year, Tuteleers says the company is
starting to realize it has to focus more on cars. "We had 799,000 visitors
last summer. We were just showing concept cars. That's what the public wants
to see. We think it's important for us to have product-related exhibitions."
Saxty says, "Car companies don't get credit for being intellectual.
It doesn't work, and consumers don't expect that of them." He points
to a new VW showroom in Berlin as an example of the way forward. All the
brands Volkswagen owns are shown together. "It works a bit like a Venn
diagram," he says. "The low-cost cars are grouped near each other
so visitors can wander between them. Where there is clear overlap, VW allows
the customers to see all the products in a very subtle way--and to comparison
shop." VW is giving consumers what they want while at the same time
selling cars. "In the end, if you're not selling, then there is no
brand."
Cedergren thinks the Champs-Elysées' brand-spheres will have to sell
cars to justify their existence within their companies, particularly in
a less friendly economic climate. Still, he says, boutique showrooms remain
crucial to car companies. "Young people want to buy cars like they
buy clothes. It's a strategy that works particularly well with the luxury
marques, which is why you're seeing this move to dealerships that work like
high-end luxury boutiques." In keeping with these trends, even stalwarts
like Lincoln and Cadillac are launching showrooms. Cadillac's called in
Andrée Putman to consult on its new flagship in Miami, and Lincoln
is developing a similar concept in Chicago where the Knoll furniture won't
look out of place.
Toyota is planning to redesign its space in Paris. Although neither Brühe
nor Le Paire will elaborate on what they're planning, the designer concedes,
"Companies need to think about what the consumer really wants--and
not so much about what they want to communicate to the consumer." So
perhaps soon Toyota will let people buy cars in its showroom, and the brand-scapes
on the Champs-Elysées will be more in keeping with the Louis Vuitton
shop down the street, where they actually sell the products they're showing.
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