Skip to footer

Acura gets own marketing division as sedan sales slide

Luxury automaker Acura will get its own team to help market its products after the brand reportedly saw a drop in sales of its sedans.

|
Chris Young/The Canadian Press/AP/File
Acura unveils the TLX prototype to the media at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto last month. Honda, Acura's parent company, will assign a marketing division to its luxury brand for the first time in its history.
  • By Viknesh Vijayenthiran Guest blogger

From April 1, Acura will have its own sales and marketing division separate to that of Honda for the first time. The move is intended to create greater clarity and more cohesive sales and marketing plans that are better suited for its products, Acura said in a statement.

Acura managed to sell 165,436 vehicles in 2013, which was a 5.9 increase on the previous year and the best sales total since 2007. But as Bloomberg points out, Acura also experienced a 10 percent drop in combined sales of its ILX, TSX, TL and RLX sedans.

To be fair, the TSX and TL are on their last legs and are soon to be replaced by a single model, the 2015 TLX, this summer. However, both the ILX and RLX are relatively new and the sedan sales slide is occurring at a time when the luxury segment is booming.

Heading the new Acura division will be Michael Accavitti. Reporting to him will be Erik Berkman, who has been put in charge of a new Acura Business Planning Office. This new entity will focus on strengthening the business and product strategies for the Acura brand.

It is not clear yet what strategy Acura will undertake as it moves forward, though it may be one centered on the brand’s performance image. This year a racing version of the upcoming TLX sedan will enter the highly competitive Pirelli World Challenge, and in 2015 we’ll finally see the launch of Acura’s second-generation NSX.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Acura gets own marketing division as sedan sales slide
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2014/0312/Acura-gets-own-marketing-division-as-sedan-sales-slide
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe