Hand it to Hyundai.
You can sell anything to some people some of the time (think Hummer), but sooner or later, if you value corporate survival, you have to market a truly competitive product. Staying competitive, especially in industries with long lead-time R&D or complicated and expensive manufacturing tooling, requires attention to those new product ideas that may dramatically change the marketplace. Excepting those rare, unchallengeable patents that create altogether new industries (e.g., Xerox’s plain paper copier, Polaroid’s instant photography, etc.), the big guys don’t have to be first. Even if they trail the garage innovators, their financial and market clout can be used to copy or buy the new ideas.
But when the big guys, even those protected by marketing muscle or a patent’s impregnable castle walls, ignore the dust clouds that signal hordes approaching, obsolescence or obliteration may follow. Continue reading “Innovative Auto Marketing from Hyundai”