Ad Campaign of the Week: Subaru Ad Calls Attention to Reliability

Subaru wants you to know that its vehicles can be dependable for a really long time. That’s the point behind a new video ad that depicts a young child who seems to be packing up to leave home. As he loads all of his belongings in a Subaru, the ad then shows that the boy is actually grown and leaving home, but in that same Subaru. So how does this ad actually come across to consumers? We asked 1,000 respondents about their thoughts on different automotive brands and then tested the Subaru ad to see if it made any impact on potential buyers.

Automotive Brands

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest online survey, 83% of respondents said that they currently own or lease a vehicle. And another 4% have in the past. Of those automotive consumers, 12% said that they have owned or leased a Subaru vehicle at some point. And just 4% currently drive Subaru vehicles. In addition, 72% of respondents said that they’re at least somewhat likely to purchase a vehicle again at some point in the future.

Subaru Ad

Overall, just 6% of future automotive buyers said that they would be certain or practically certain about choosing Subaru for their next vehicle purchase. And 16% said that it would be very probable. Of those who viewed Subaru’s new ad, 9% said that they would be certain or practically certain about choosing Subaru for their next vehicle purchase. And 19% said it would be very probable.In addition, 12% of viewers who have children said that they would be certain or practically certain about choosing Subaru for their next vehicle purchase after viewing the ad. And 23% said that it would be very probable.

Brand Attributes

In general, consumers seem to see Subaru as a brand that is reliable, respectable, trustworthy and valuable. Those who viewed the Subaru ad were more likely to rate the brand highly in all of those positive attributes. But it didn’t make a significant difference in terms of any other qualities.

Key Takeaways

Subaru’s ad seemed to improve the brand’s image among consumers in terms of many different attributes. Consumers as a whole were also more likely to say that they’ll consider buying a Subaru after seeing the ad. But parents were actually even more likely to be impacted by the ad. For that reason, it could be beneficial for Subaru to target the ad to parents by including it with family-friendly programming or parenting-related content. It’s likely that Subaru already targets many of its ads to this demographic. But in those situations where non-parents encounter the ad, it is still likely to have a positive impact, just maybe not quite as much.You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Subaru by RoadOver under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on February 23 via AYTM’s online survey panel.