Honda Goes With A Straight Jab For Ridgeline

In our last post, we talked about how the Persil commercial that aired during the Super Bowl exemplified a classic form of competitive positioning. Today, we take a look at how Honda used an old strategic standby, attribute positioning, in its Ridgeline commercial.

Attribute positioning is not what most marketers would look at as an exotic strategy, like, say, a single-arm kimura is in Jiu Jitsu, but more like a straight jab to the kisser. It may not be sexy, but it gets the job done.

In the super competitive truck/truck-like market, every brand is looking to carve out a unique space for themselves. Grabbing some ground that makes your nameplate different isn't easy and usually doesn't last very long. In this case, Honda used its agency's creativity and the enormous occasion of the Super Bowl show off their new truck-bed audio system and separate the Ridgeline from the rest of the pack. In a classic use of "attribute" positioning, Honda executed this strategy to a T.