The Holden brand might be gone, but it will never be forgotten
Landor's Nick Foley pays tribute to one of Australia's greatest brands, and argues the Holden brand will live on given its immense cultural impact.
The news of the Holden brand being abandoned by General Motors is not entirely surprising given the company’s decision to cease manufacturing vehicles in Australia in October 2017. Indeed, the writing was on the wall a few months ago when Holden announced it was killing off the Commodore brand.
But despite all signs pointing to the Holden brand being sent to the scrap heap in the sky, it still hurts that it’s come to this. Come the end of this year, the Holden brand will go the way of other vehicle brands such as Saab, Rover and Pontiac. But, in another way, the brand will live on.
Out of every automobile company that used to manufacture cars in this country, Holden held the closest relationship with Australians. Sure, everyone knew the parent company was General Motors. But, unlike Ford, which universally applied its blue oval badge to all of its cars, regardless of where they were made, Holden had its own distinct branding.
It differed substantially from GM’s product lineup in the US and made us feel like it was our own.
Holden and Australia were linked, with the brand tracing back to a saddlery business in South Australia which commenced trading in 1856. It wasn’t until 1948 that Australia received its very first mass produced, locally built car. Following the end of the second World War, Australia proved it was serious about manufacturing, and the first FX Holden rolled off the production line in Port Melbourne, Victoria.
Since then, it’s been the Holden master brand that has underpinned the launch of a number of iconic, local, product brands: the FJ Holden, the Torana, the Kingswood, the Monaro, the Commodore and, who could forget, Holden’s uniquely branded panel van, the Sandman.
Australian folklore goes that Holden dealers gave buyers of Sandman panel vans the option of adding a bumper sticker to their new purchase that read: ‘If this van’s rocking, don’t bother knocking’.
Holden was more than just a car brand to Australians. It spawned a TV series called Kingswood Country featuring Ted Bullpit as a blustering, suburban father confused by the intricacies of an ever-changing world, but safe in the knowledge that as long as his trusty Kingwood was parked in the garage, everything would be okay.
It was Holden that backed a young Peter Brock to take the fight to Allan Moffat and Ford, enabling him to conquer Mount Panorama and win the Bathurst 1000 a record nine times.
It was Holden that carried Prime Ministers, Premiers, Governor-Generals and visiting dignitaries in its luxury Statesman Caprice range.
And it was Holden that built the first Aussie ute that proved to be such a hit with farmers and tradies alike.
It’s been Holden that has carried the Australian spirit, helping many of us to believe that a country located at the bottom of the world could punch above its weight.
In what proved to be a prophetic move last year, Jimmy Barnes released a single titled ‘Shutting down our town’. It’s a song about the singer growing up in the north of Adelaide and returning to his hometown to find Holden was ceasing operations at its South Australian factory. Before joining Cold Chisel, Barnes worked at the Holden manufacturing plant in Elizabeth.
Holden’s parent company, General Motors, is justifying the death of its local car brand by claiming it’s no longer economical to build right-hand drive vehicles given that 75% of the world drives on the other side of the road. If such logic is to be believed, Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes, Porsche and Ferrari would all swiftly announce that they too are giving up on markets that drive on “the wrong side of the road”.
But the ‘25% excuse’ from General Motors is nothing more than corporate spin designed to take the focus away from the real reason the Holden brand has been axed.
The Holden Commodore was Australia’s best-selling car. Whilst there were many economic reasons for stopping local manufacturing, it seemed that Holden’s sales and marketing team failed to grasp the enormity of just what it meant when the last Holden Commodore rolled off the production line at Elizabeth. The sad truth is that Holden couldn’t envisage a future without its locally produced Commodore and subsequently scrambled to provide a range that Australians wanted.
Ford could easily cobble together a story for why it might stop having a presence in Australia. After all, it too built cars locally for over 60 years and created the legendary Falcon brand.
Unlike Holden, though, when the last Falcon was produced in Geelong, Victoria in 2016, Ford chose to retire the Falcon brand. It accepted that Australians would miss the raw grunt of a V8 Falcon so replaced it with its iconic Mustang five-litre V8 – in a right-hand drive configuration. It put money behind marketing the Mustang and did the same with its highly successful Ranger truck line-up.
The curiosity with GM’s sudden announcement will no doubt continue in the months ahead. Australian taxpayers contributed billions of dollars to Holden’s operations over 70 odd years. It’s understandable that emotions will be running high as Australians react to the news. The announcement of 800 job losses at Holden’s head office will also attract unwanted attention for General Motors.
But, similar to brands like Pan Am and Ansett, the Holden brand will live on long after the last employee turns out the lights at the company’s headquarters in Port Melbourne.
There are still hundreds of thousands of Holdens on the road, and many more stored in garages, being kept in mint condition. Holden will always hold a special place in the hearts of Australians.
Whilst it couldn’t capitalise on the rise of SUVs, or the shift to lower emission vehicles, it gave this country a brand we could all get behind. It gave us ‘Peter Perfect’, ‘The Mountain’, an intense, tribal rivalry with the ‘Blue Oval’, and a backlog of legendary products that most companies would die for.
It’s highly unlikely any other Australian brand will ever be able to emulate the success of Holden.
Nick Foley is president south-east Asia Pacific and Japan of Landor
I’m an old Holden fan and worked on many with my father who was an engineer and an old Holden fan. My first and second cars were both Holden’s. And I’m warmed by your nostalgic view here. But I don’t agree with it.
Alas, to me Holden completely missed the market on what contemporary customers were seeking. They persisted for too long selling big, solid, six cylinder cars built in Australia, “for Australian conditions”. Meanwhile the Toyota, Mazda and Honda stole their market, with often better, and certainly more appropriate cars. More recently they also missed the move to SUV’s, because they were still gazing in the rear view mirror. That’s a more recent and massive miss.
And as the relevance dropped, so did the brand building, the aspiration and the emotional connection created through great brand advertising and advertising awareness. The pride in buying and owning a Holden went and the sales followed.
They continued to focus and invest in V8 motorsport, but again that’s an example of looking backwards. “Win on Sunday, showroom Monday” was the old catch cry. Not anymore. The cars parked at Mt Panorama Bathurst are no longer filled with Holdens and Fords. Those dedicated fans are often tradies and are in the Toyota and Mazda showrooms buying “unbreakable” Hilux’s and BT50’s. Though admittedly at Bathurst, they still sell plenty of Holden and Ford merch!
I think my key point here is one of brand relevance and customer understanding. Or lack of. Without market, product, competitive and customer understanding it didn’t take them long to lose relevance. They lost sight of their customer need and the competitive context. That feels like marketing and branding 101 to me. The sales data told them that, quarter on quarter. The brand had nostalgia, it had love, it had fans, it had memories and it had stories. All the things you mention. And for many it still has all those things. Sadly it’s proven, that wasn’t nearly enough.
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I think this story is more complex than that and is actually the result of a range of economic forces including a reduction in tariffs, globalisation, increased living standards, minimum wages and workplace expectations. I’ve owned my share of Commodores and Falcons and the cars themselves were never world class. Dollar for dollar, there was no way they could ever compete on the quality of the product. Their relevance depended on tariffs and government incentives to drive local manufacturing. Once the playing field levelled and we started trying to compete with global manufacturing (and countries prepared to offer zero tax to establish a large factory that would employ local workers with much lower salary and benefits expectations) the end was nigh.
I’m more surprised that an iconic brand with such strong cultural roots embedded in the fabric of the nation could become virtually worthless overnight. An important lesson for all marketers.
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I’m struggling to understand your take here Nick. Like the comment before, this is less to do with a beloved brand and more to do with marketing complacency and mistaking historic success with present relevance.
Holden’s products were an articulation of their understanding of Australians. White picket fence, quarter acre blocks with room for the nuclear family. This was unfortunately, not the case in Australia. We live in smaller houses (read: apartments), commute longer hours (read: no need for a V8) and have a greater appreciation for international offerings.
Leveraging a brand takes care and skill, something which Landor does well. You as well as anyone, should know that this alone is not enough. It’s need ongoing relevancy, an understanding of customers and the product to back it up.
Holden had none of these.
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The GMH business model was completely unsuitable to building a strong brand beyond a single model – a massive problem in a market that went from a small number of quite generic choices to many many brands and a plethora of product niches. And Commodore, as that single model, lost touch with changing expectations. RIP.
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Holden is far from the worst selling car brand in Australia. It’s not that sticking a Holden badge on Vauxhalls and near Isuzus is particularly taxing. (The two Chev models were a different story). GM have taken a particularly strong stand on ROI, and they’re pulling out of the entire world except China and North America.
Once the tariff/subsidy wall was gone, and the nationalism had ebbed away, each model had to compete on it’s merits. And each model lost against the others on offer.
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GM (USA) has a long history dating from approximately 1970 of forcing the market to accept products they wanted to sell -you should research this for yourselves….
Their financial state and their product line reflect this.
That it finally caused the Holden brand and, indeed, the right hand drive market to be sacrificed is no surprise.
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Once GM left Europe, Africa and the Indian subcontinent, the factory in Thailand was no longer viable.
No Colorado = no GMH.
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