This article, a fantastic rant by auto writer Chris Harris, is a great example of how zealously trying to control your brand’s message can backfire. Harris skewers Ferrari for things like heavily modifying journalists’ test cars to specific tracks so they perform better than any production car you could buy at a Ferrari dealership. In fact, Ferrari tries to prohibit journalist who review their cars from driving other, production Ferraris.
http://jalopnik.com/#!5760248/how-ferrari-spins
Excerpt:
What Ferrari plainly cannot see is that its strategy to win every test at any cost is completely counter-productive. First, it completely undermines the amazing work of its own engineers. What does it say about a 458 if the only way its maker is willing to loan it to a magazine is if a laptop can be plugged in after every journey and a dedicated team needs to spend several days at the chosen test track to set-up the car? It says they’re completely nuts —- behavior that looks even worse when rival brands just hand over their car with nothing more than a polite suggestion that you should avoid crashing it too heavily, and then return a week later.
It’s the level of control that’s so profoundly irritating and I think damaging to the brand. Once you know that it takes a full support crew and two 458s to supply those amazing stats, it then takes the shine off the car. The simple message from Ferrari is that unless you play exactly by the laws they lay down, you’re off the list.
Harris also rightly points out why this kind of behavior can be so damaging:
Point two: the internet is good for three things: free porn, Jalopnik and spreading information. Fifteen years ago, if your 355 wasn’t as fast as the maker claimed you could give the supplying dealer a headache, whine at the local owners club and not much besides. Nowadays you spray your message around the globe and every bugger knows about it in minutes. So, when we used an owner’s 430 Scud because Ferrari wouldn’t lend us the test car, it was obliterated in a straight line by a GT2 and a Lambo LP 560-4, despite all the “official” road test figures suggesting it was faster than Halley’s Comet. The forums went nuts and some Scud owners rightly felt they hadn’t been delivered the car they’d read about in all the buff books. Talk about karma slapping you in the face.
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