How Nissan is trying to reclaim its marketing edge

In June, Nissan began running an ad for its Pathfinder crossover that shows a girl in the back passenger seat smiling at a boy riding in a generic-looking sedan in the adjacent lane. The Pathfinder then takes an abrupt detour for some off-roading before reappearing on the highway, once again encountering the sedan in which the boy is shown staring in astonishment at the now-muddied Pathfinder.

The nonverbal exchange between the two is cute — but the Pathfinder and its features consume the majority of airtime with Nissan pushing an outdoorsy version of the vehicle called Rock Creek. The approach of putting the vehicle front and center foreshadows the marketing path Nissan will take under Vinay Shahani, who joined the automaker this year as senior VP for marketing and sales for Nissan Americas.

The ad, which comes from TBWA\Chiat\Day, “really speaks to the product in a way [that] the car is definitely the star,” Shahani said on the latest edition of Ad Age’s Marketer’s Brief podcast. “It’s not overly focused on a particular story other than a bit of relatability between … the two different people in the spot.”

The strategy is meant to highlight “the thrill of the ride,” he added, noting that it was an approach Nissan successfully used in the early 2000s.

“One of the things that I loved about Nissan was it was edgy. It was a little irreverent, it was a fun brand and I feel like we lost a little bit of that over time,” he said.

Shahani would know, given his history with the brand. He first landed a job at Nissan in 2004 as a plant engineer before taking on roles in sales and marketing. Shahani left Nissan in 2013 to take the chief marketing officer role at Volkswagen of America before landing a marketing job at Toyota in 2017. He returned to Nissan in January after three years as marketing VP at Toyota-owned Lexus, where he pushed the luxury brand into TikTok and influencer marketing to attract younger buyers.

Shahani joins Nissan at a tumultuous time. Global operating profit fell 99 percent to ¥995 million ($6.4 million) in the three months ended June 30, the company reported last week, with U.S. sales falling 3.1 percent to 237,000.

“We don’t have an issue with awareness, but we do have some issues with familiarity of the lineup,” Shahani said on the podcast. “We're a full-line manufacturer and I don't think enough people know that we have trucks, we have small sedans, we have SUVs. We have a wide variety of powertrain options, whether it's internal combustion or battery-electric vehicles.”

But Nissan is lacking in gasoline-electric hybrids, a segment that has gained popularity as sales of fully electric vehicles fail to reach expectations in part because of consumer driving range anxiety.

Shahani pointed to Nissan’s global business plan, known as The Arc, which calls for 30 new model launches in the next three years. In the U.S., Nissan has stated it will refresh 78 percent of its passenger vehicle lineup, including introducing plug-in hybrid models.

“I think there’s an opportunity to really start seeding that story,” Shahani said, appealing to people looking for “powertrain diversity.”

On the podcast, Shahani also recalled his time with Volkswagen, when he led U.S. marketing as the German brand dealt with a global emissions testing cheating scandal. 

“The biggest learning is there's always a way out of the crisis, there’s always a way to look forward,” he said. “And I think ultimately as a leader, that's what your team looks to you for, which is to take the noise out of the picture and create clarity.”

The scandal involved models marketed as “clean diesel.”

“Poof, overnight, 25 percent of the mix went up in smoke because you couldn't sell those vehicles anymore,” Shahani recalled. “So then the focus became how do we make the most of the rest of the portfolio.”

“Having that experience allows me to really sort of tap into figuring out for any given brand  how to motivate the team, how to keep the team focused on the biggest opportunities moving forward.”