Auto manufacturers have struggled to sell cars to Millennials. The reasons for this struggle are many: Millennials would rather buy iPhones than cars. Millennials are broke. Millennials hate advertising. All of these are at least partially true. Every year, the big automakers roll out ad campaigns aimed at Millennials. Every year, they fail to increase sales. This year, Honda may have found a way to finally reverse this trend. They let Skeletor take over their Twitter account.
Skeletor Conquers Social Media
Happy Honda Days
Okay, so it isn’t all about Skeletor (the evil enemy of 80’s cartoon hero He-Man). Honda recently launched a campaign called “Happy Honda Days” in which they created videos of popular toys from the 80’s, including He-Man, Jem, and Gumby to name a few, extolling the virtues of purchasing a car from Honda. Specifically, they compared the experience of buying a car in your thirties to that of opening a toy on Christmas as a child in the 80’s. The idea is to play on the nostalgia of older Millennials for their own childhoods.
The tongue-in-cheek campaign has now been extended to Twitter where the aforementioned lord of Snake Mountain, Skeletor, was put in charge of Honda’s Twitter account. Skeletor, in true villainous fashion, took potshots at Eternia’s King Randor, and his arch-nemesis He-Man. If none of that made sense to you, it’s not supposed to. Honda is going after a very specific demographic with “Happy Honda Days” by using characters that are almost universally known to “80’s kids” that may be totally unrecognizable to older or younger demographics. The question is, will it work? Will nostalgia, and comedy combine to help overcome the tendency of Millennials to avoid buying cars? Will a new Honda be the new Castle Grayskull under the Christmas tree this year?
Only time will tell.
For more, check out our article on how not to market to Millennials.
