JUNE 21 — If you have a suspicious mind, you’re bound to notice the inordinate number of Proton advertisements in local motoring magazines and pull-outs. For a company that’s just seen a sizeable swathe of red painted on its balance sheets, the ad-spend gravy train still seems to be calling on all stations.
It’s a policy that’s been in place for as long as I can remember; whether by accident or design, Proton is regularly the biggest advertiser in many a motoring rag. Inside cover, double-page spreads, back cover, you’ll find at least one Proton advertisement in practically anything that even remotely concerns motoring – and many more that don’t.
You’ve got to be a real turd bucket of a mag not to be able to get a piece of the action. In fact, if you’re running a motoring magazine and you can’t get a Proton ad, it’s probably time to start considering an exit strategy. Out a window of a very tall building would be a good place to start.
But you must be wondering what the problem would be for a car manufacturer to lavish advertising expenditure so generously on car-related periodicals. After all, it makes sense that if you want to sell cars, you try and reach the people who are reading about them. Fair enough, in an ideal world.
Except we don’t live in an ideal world. We don’t even live in one that qualifies as store brand sweetened creamer.
So although there is nothing terribly wrong with Proton being a media life-support system that also happens to make cars on the side, the problem manifests itself when the magazines start to become addicted to this easy source of income.
And a junkie will do anything to get a fix.
The insidiousness of it all is that the people involved don’t even realise when it starts to happen. It may begin with something fairly innocuous, maybe the killing of a potentially negative piece of news item. Then it spreads to playing up some non-event into a big affair. And before you know it, they’ve got you by the marbles where you – gasp! – censor your own reviews.
God help you when they decide to call in favours.
It doesn’t take a huge leap to spot the disconnect between what you read about Proton and what you know about them. Granted, there is a lot of vitriol and objectivity often goes out the window when the subject of the national carmaker arises – everybody wants to get their boot in – but isn’t that an indicator in itself?
I mean, how many people do you personally know who say “Oh lord, I can’t wait to get my first Proton”? I can’t recall a single one that ever gave a positive account of the ownership experience and the most charitable I’ve come across is when someone says “It didn’t break on me,” as though that is an achievement in and of itself.
To put things into perspective: Here’s an exercise for you, if you read and collect local motoring rags. Go through each and every one in your library, and try to find a single negative review about Proton’s models. Not just those that pussy-foot around the subject; find one that empathises with the way you feel about the company. Let me warn you; you’d best hunker down before you start.
It’s hard to see what value Proton hopes to achieve from all the sugar-coated write-ups and news, especially when they are fully cognisant of the fact that the cars that they make and sell are nothing like the stuff you read about. What did teacher say about overpromising and under-delivering again?
Right – don’t do it.
As an ex-owner, I don’t even need to imagine the disappointment of reading glowing reviews of a Proton, only to discover the term “creative licence” post-purchase. “Not best pleased” would be the only way I could sum it all up without having to resort to colourful language.
There’s also the risk of Proton themselves swallowing all the make-believe as real. Someone calls you great once, you thank him. More people tell you how wonderful you are, you maybe throw a party. But if everyone starts singing your praises, it’s hard not to want to go out and buy a red cape.
Fortunately, that’s an unlikely scenario, given that they still have to drive their own cars.
The situation with an overly-friendly media is only likely to deteriorate, now that so many other car companies have reined in their ad-spend in light of the tanking economy. More and more are going to start turning up at Proton’s doorsteps with their palms out to make up the difference but even Proton cannot afford to maintain the burn-rate that they must have now, not if they harbour any hopes of getting back to black.
Oh, but the irony! Despite having bankrolled an industry that has become both dependent and beholden to its generosity, Proton have not even begun to pay the price.
I would expect that once that happens and the rivers run dry, the knives that Proton have managed to keep sheathed thus far by being such a strong proponent of advertising would slowly be drawn. Which would be a nice change compared to the flurry of toothpicks that are currently stabbing away at their largely mediocre range of offerings.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
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