I love cars. I mean I really love cars. I remember the night that Dad took my brother and I into town for the local launch of the new 1988 EA Ford Falcon. From then on I was hooked, I'd borrow Wheels magazine from the library every month and read every word and state including the spec sheet at the back. And although I now buy my own, I still do!
Anyway I paused to think recently about Mazda's Zoom Zoom Zoom catch cry. They've been using it since 2000 and show no signs of getting tired of it and I think that's because it's not just good, but its great. As far as tag lines go its one of the best ever.
But why? Firstly it taps into an innate human emotion, that feeling of freedom and movement, when children run around a park with gay abandon, the feeling you get when your dad picks you up and spins you through the air, riding a push bike down a hill and of course zooming your toy cars around the room.
But more than that Mazda haven't just tapped into this feeling with their customers, they have tapped into it with their entire company, from the CEO, to product engineers, to marketers and sales staff they all embody the Zoom Zoom philosophy.
I know this because I read what the product engineers and designers say at vehicle launches, it's all about quick steering, styling that conveys movement, engines that are quick to respond to to throttle inputs and lightness. They say things like "We could have done that but then it wouldn't have been Zoom Zoom". They have literally taken the essence of Zoom Zoom and put it on the road.
And now in changing times when other car makers are pursuing small capacity, low boost turbo engines to improve economy and emissions, Mazda are saying NO, lets find another way, low-boost turbos aren't Zoom Zoom, not responsive enough they say, so what do their engineers do? The go away and invent Skyactiv a part by part re-design of the old fashioned non-turbo internal combustion engine and transmission, seeking lightness and efficiency gains with every micrometre. With the last MX5 they even weighed the rear view mirror and made a handful of grams lighter!
You can even see Zoom Zoom at work in the things that Mazda HAVEN'T been good at recently (but are fixing) - road noise, ride refinement and interior quality. Why haven't they been good at these things? Because they aren't Zoom Zoom, soft touch plastics don't make a car any more Zoom Zoom than hard ones!
So that's to me why Zoom Zoom is the best tagline ever, because it truly means something, its inherent in all of us, the thrill of movement, the thrill of freedom and no one feels this more than the people who work at Mazda all the way to the top.
The lesson for other marketers? Search for your organisation's fundamental truth, its fundamental human reason for being, express it well and then make sure that your whole company embraces it so that it shows up in the product.
OH and results? Mazda since 2000 has developed one of the most critically acclaimed car model ranges on sale today and the Mazda 3 has just become the first imported car to top Australian sales charts since the 1920's. Seems lots of other people relate to Zoom Zoom too.
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