This pioneering research redefines the way we market cars. Artificial segmentations based on personality differences offer weak foundations on which to build brand strategies. To deeply engage us, a brand must have a solid inner architecture deeply rooted in the fundamentals of humanity. Beneath all the phantasmagoria of global marketing communication, lies order and rhythm, the source code of our human behaviour. Summarising the results of our research, this presentation analyses the fundamental motives underpinning consumer behaviour towards cars and proposes a way to build automotive brands that engage people at a profound human level. Our fundamental human motives are like bare patterns in any language. Successful brands infuse the pattern, fertilising the basic forms, in a unique and profoundly human way, enabling people to experience deep patterns that make them feel alive. There is a direct correlation between our fundamental human motives, the most direct way to engage people, and the level of sales and profit. The efficiency of communication budgets is maximized when the authentic codes of the brand germinate the deepest motives driving sales and profit in the category. Today we have no excuse for saying that “we waste half of our advertising budget but we don’t know which half”. Above all, by satisfying the most fundamental of our human motives the brand is deeply humanistic in that it offers holistic, universal experiences that no longer satisfy some individual needs but the needs of the species.

1. WHAT MAKES
CARS SELL

2. Hi! My name is Constantinos
Pantidos and I believe that
companies could improve
people’s lives even more
effectively if they had
deeper human insight.

3. Using a multidisciplinary
approach, BRAND AVIATORS™
has captured and presents, for
the first time, the fundamental
human motives underpinning
our car buying behaviour at the
deepest levels of their
deployment …

4. … all the way from:
• their biological value
• to the neurosystems they
engage
• to the cognitive operations
and psychological states
they activate
• to the major social
reinforcers they cause and
• to the rich hierarchy of
inherent concepts they
infuse into our everyday
life

5. This methodology helps marketers
develop Intrinsically Engaging
Narratives™

6. The motives are
presented in order of
increasing relative
importance in line with
their power to influence
our buying decisions

7. FORESIGHT: On an initial layer of motivation, what actually
makes cars successful is their prodigious intelligence which
makes us feel more mature and experienced, it makes us
look and feel smarter. As we trust our life to the car, buying
and using it calls for our good judgment. Driving, itself, is an
experience that calls for our prudence and wisdom. Cars
help us assume nothing, and be prepared for anything.

8. ALIVENESS: More significantly, cars sell
because they make us feel alive. Their very
mobility stands for life itself. Speed exalts the
moment. We experience life as a series of
cars.

9. EXPRESSION: On a deeper level, cars
constitute an excellent means of displaying
our personal taste. Choosing a car,
personalising it (adding new gadgets,
individualizing it), living with it, we feel like
we have participated in its creation. In turn,
the type of car we have, influences the way
we behave.

10. COMPANIONSHIP: Cars bring us
closer to other people. For our cars,
there is a deep feeling of attachment.

11. PROTECTION: Embedding the enveloping
and secure nature of cars, some of the
most successful brands help us feel that
the car protects us. Cars are moving
shelters. Through them we protect
ourselves and others. In turn, the car
needs our care. Like our pet, or our baby
it requires our attention.

12. TRANSFORMATION: Going into a deeper motivation, cars promise motion
without effort, manipulation of space and time. They give us unusual powers.
A car is a fetish object to fascinate oneself over natural reality with the
powers of transcendence of existence.

13. DEFIANCE: On a yet deeper layer of motivation, going very fast involves
excitement connected to the underlying danger of an accident, the
dangerous play between fear and exhilaration. Speed is almost like taking
some drug: Speeding up, reckless driving, and making a noise that disrupts
tranquility can be an unconscious form of protest against a perfectly
operated complex society which is perceived as a threat to the
independence of the individual.

14. PLEASURE: Moving closer to the heart of the matter, what
actually makes cars sell is the inherently pleasurable experience
of driving. Driving extends the senses. Speed itself is intrinsically
erotic. A car that runs is a sensual object. We glide in space with
the superb serenity of total pleasure. An energy of penetration
of space creates in front of the car a void that absorbs it. The
body, by definition virile and dynamic is spread out in space.
Cars are sexy machines and mastering them is inherently erotic.

15. CONTROL: Cars offer us the ability
to direct potential powerful forces.
The ability to control this mass of
enormous energy gives the
illusion of dominance, superiority,
personal mastery and command
of basic human impulses. It gives
us the sense of self-control.

16. SECURITY: Moving into a deeper motivation,
inside the car we exist in a secure world, well
protected against the external dangers. Travel
in our unconscious symbolises the eternal
search for paradise beyond the surrounding
chaos. As, in our mind, speed is associated
with youth, we feel that driving makes us
younger. By crossing space we deny time.

17. INDEPENDENCE: The car is the symbol of freedom par excellence.
Cars extend our boundaries, create virtually unrestricted
horizons. Through them we achieve freedom of action, at least
subjectively, we become independent at least in our mind.

18. WILLPOWER: On the innermost
layer of human motivation,
what makes cars sell is their
capacity to turn the driver into a
super being. Intrinsically, moving
is power and the car supplies
more power to individuals than
they have ever controlled
before. When we drive, the
primordial instincts of strength
and aggression are at play.

19. This map illustrates
the way some major
brands in the global
automobile industry
are positioned in the
consumers’ mind

20. Successful brands
coherently express
the fundamental
human motives
driving their
category

21. BRAND AVIATORS™ are trusted by some of the world’s
leading companies:

22. (Re)define your brand through the
human fundamentals if you seek to:
• Deeply engage people locally and
across cultures
• Develop genuine concepts that work
year after year after year
• Align all brand communications under
one master idea
• Increase the ROI of all your brand
activities

23. My mission is to help clients
around the world build
brands that liberate the very
forces of life. Contact us now
for a free discovery audit by
clicking on the icon: