---
title: "Amping Up the Electric Car Story – Character – Experts on Brand Character and Story"
language: "en-US"
canonical_url: "https://ipa1ewmwkdvx8gk.onstatic.studio/2011/06/05/amping_up_the_electric_car_story/"
source_url: "https://ipa1ewmwkdvx8gk.onstatic.studio/2011/06/05/amping_up_the_electric_car_story/"
content_type: "text/markdown"
---

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							![](https://characterweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/blog_img_thinker-177x300.png)								](https://characterweb.com/blog/)














### Amping Up the Electric Car Story







								-
						[

							by
										David Altschul
									](https://ipa1ewmwkdvx8gk.onstatic.studio/author/daltschul/)


				-

										June 5, 2011















									There
was a funny article in AdAge this past week about Nissan and Renault
airing essentially the same commercial for two competing electric cars.
(In case you missed it, [here’s the link.](http://adage.com/article/global-news/nissan-renault-debut-identical-electric-car-ads/227849/))
Worse, it seems very likely that both spots were essentially remakes of
a spec spot created for Mitsubishi by a German production company.

From
my point of view, the apparent plagiarism, while amusing, is less
interesting than what this episode says about how various car companies
are using story as they try to define their place in the world of
electric cars. The fact that the same spot can be used for all three
brands suggests that no one has carved out any unique story territory
yet.

It
reminds me of MP3 players before the iPod. A large group of competitors
were piling into the category, battling with each other over a
catalogue of features that conveyed very little meaning to most
consumers. By contrast, Apple entered the category with a strong story
that went beyond the literal new technology. The iPod seemed like such a
brilliant collision of technology and intuition that many consumers
perceived it as an altogether new kind of device.

Toyota
captured that kind of story energy for hybrid vehicles with the Prius.
It is significant that, in both cases–iPod and Prius–the story energy
was unique enough and authentic enough to reflect back on the parent
brands themselves.

I
don’t know that there is anything wrong with Nissan and Renault
spending money to tell the category story of electric cars (questions of
creative integrity aside). But it does feel like the territory is wide
open for someone to stake a much more engaging and compelling claim to a
unique story.

I’d love to know if you see this same dynamic playing out in any other categories.














								-

							categories:

				[Brand Identity](https://ipa1ewmwkdvx8gk.onstatic.studio/tag/brand-identity/), [Car Brands](https://ipa1ewmwkdvx8gk.onstatic.studio/tag/car-brands/), [Category Story](https://ipa1ewmwkdvx8gk.onstatic.studio/tag/category-story/)



















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