NASHVILLE -- New models are supposed to burst onto the market, suddenly visible and available everywhere, in showrooms and ad campaigns and on the street.
But not so for the Nissan Titan.
In its second crack at breaking into the rich Detroit 3-dominated full-size pickup segment, Nissan is following a radical strategy of market introduction.
The automaker is focusing its marketing and distribution efforts for the Titan on just four U.S. cities -- Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Salt Lake City.
Meunier: Begin in four markets.
"We've concentrated on only those markets at first," said Christian Meunier, Nissan North America's senior vice president of sales & marketing and operations. "And once we're satisfied that we're where we want to be in those markets, we will then move to our second phase."
That second phase will be six more markets, which the company declined to identify.
For Nissan, satisfaction translates to capturing about 5 percent of the local share of full-size pickup sales. Meunier says the company has nearly reached that level in its initial launch cities.
Once happy with the results in the early markets, Nissan will move to a third phase of 40 markets, going national only after the Titan is established in the individual cities.
Dealers in other cities have been able to get Titans ahead of the step-by-step schedule if they want them, but Nissan's marketing push is focused only on its target cities for now.
"It's a bit different, but we needed to do it this way," Meunier told Automotive News.
There's plenty different about Nissan's foray into large pickups. For starters, it is meddling with primal forces to challenge the Detroit 3 in the segment. The Detroit 3 have the resources -- money, factory capacity, marketing know-how and the will -- to crush a new full-size competitor if they choose.
Pickups are the bread and butter of U.S. automakers, and their customers are fiercely loyal. It's hard enough for Chevrolet to win over a Ford pickup customer, or vice versa. So for Nissan to climb into that fight requires the Japanese brand to move slowly and cautiously.
The Titan's surgical launch strategy helps Nissan on three key fronts.
1. It lets the company avoid stretching its inventories too thin at the risk of souring shoppers in markets where a given model might be hard to find. The Titan comes from a factory in Canton, Miss., which has been slowly ramping up since November 2015.
2. Nissan wants to avoid stretching its marketing dollars too thin. Competing against the Detroit 3's national ad budgets wouldn't make much sense at Nissan's fledgling volume. Focusing on a limited number of cities allows Nissan to concentrate its firepower.
3. Nissan knows that selling full-size pickups differs from selling Altimas and Rogues. Pickup buyers expect answers on payloads and towing muscle, and they want detailed cost comparisons. For this reason, Nissan has used the slow launch as dealer training time, visiting stores to conduct full-day programs to make sure sales staffs and service departments are prepared to compete. About 700 of Nissan's approximately 1,100 retailers have had the training, Meunier says.
Nissan officials say they are pleased with the results. Last month, the limited number of dealers sold 4,033 Titans, nearly quadruple the volume of a year earlier.
That's still a drop in the bucket compared with the Detroit 3 that dominate U.S. full-size pickup sales. Ford's retailers last month delivered more than 70,000 F-series trucks. General Motors' Chevrolet and GMC dealers together sold nearly 58,000.
Nissan makes it clear it has no aspiration of ever equaling the sales power of the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado or Ram pickup. But Meunier also points out that the Titan's sales levels are only from a limited marketing effort in select cities. Volumes will rise as more markets are added, he says.
Nissan North America Chairman Jose Munoz addresses the Michigan chapter of the French-American Chamber of Commerce, touting the partnership with France's Renault as key to the Japanese automaker's strength. At the April 28 event, Munoz called the 18-year-old Renault-Nissan Alliance the most-enduring cross-cultural combination between major players in the industry. As part of the event, the chamber donated $10,000 to Forgotten Harvest, a hunger-relief agency with a goal of reducing waste in the food-supply chain.
The first-generation Titan that appeared in 2003 failed to put a dent in the segment. Annual sales peaked at 86,945 in 2005. But as the entire U.S. truck segment faltered during the recession, Titan volume didn't rise above 35,000 after 2007.
After years of delay on a second generation, Nissan rethought its approach. The company acknowledged that to be competitive, the Titan had to come in more variants, with different chassis, cab and powertrain choices, as the Detroit 3 offer.
Nissan re-entered the market in late 2015 -- but at only the high end, selling a richly appointed Titan XD version that came with a Cummins V-8 diesel engine, retailing for $36,485 including shipping. Company executives said that launching at the high end instead of the higher-volume low end was necessary to assure pickup buyers that Nissan would cover a fuller spectrum of full-size trim levels.
But as a result, the 2016 sales year relied primarily on low-volume high-end purchases.
Nissan is still stepping out of those volume constraints. Only this month, a year and a half after the high-end diesel XD appeared, the automaker will put its Titan King Cab into showrooms. Nissan believes the King Cab is crucial to enabling retailers to attract commercial truck buyers, such as homebuilders, small businesses, government agencies and trades workers.
Moreover, it was only last November that Nissan began selling the single-cab version of the truck -- the variation that offers the pickup's highest volume potential.
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