For lesbians, it was that a Subaru fit their active, low-key lifestyle.Īlthough it was easier to get senior management on board with making ads for hikers than for lesbians, the company went ahead with the campaign anyway. For rugged individualists, it was that a Subaru could handle dirt roads and haul gear. For medical professionals, it was that a Subaru with all-wheel drive could get them to the hospital in any weather conditions. Subaru’s strategy called for targeting these five core groups and creating ads based on its appeal to each. “They felt it fit them and wasn’t too flashy,” says Poux. The marketers found that lesbian Subaru owners liked that the cars were good for outdoor trips, and that they were good for hauling stuff without being as large as a truck or SUV. “There was such an alignment of feeling, like fit with what they did,” says Paul Poux, who later conducted focus groups for Subaru. When marketers talked to these customers, they realized these women buying Subarus were lesbian. “When we did the research, we found pockets of the country like Northampton, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon, where the head of the household would be a single person-and often a woman,” says Tim Bennett, who was the company’s director of advertising at the time. When the company’s marketers went searching for people willing to pay a premium for all-wheel drive, they identified four core groups who were responsible for half of the company’s American sales: teachers and educators, health-care professionals, IT professionals, and outdoorsy types.
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In the 1990s, Subaru’s unique selling point was that the company increasingly made all-wheel drive standard on all its cars. Rather than fight larger car companies over the same demographic of white, 18-to-35-year-olds living in the suburbs, executives decided to market their cars to niche groups-such as outdoorsy types who liked that Subarus could handle dirt roads.
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After the company’s attempts to reinvigorate sales- by releasing its first luxury car and hiring a hip ad agency to introduce it to the public-failed, it changed its approach. That was the question faced by Subaru of America executives in the 1990s. How do you advertise a car that journalists describe as “sturdy, if drab”?