No German Accent At Chrysler

Even before the tense negotiations concluded to separate Chrysler Group from Stuttgart-based DaimlerChrysler AG, the pentastar brand was launching a dynamic advertising campaign to seek its own voice in the marketplace.

And it is a voice that speaks without a hint of German.

About this time last year, Chrysler was “using German as a metaphor for engineering,” says George Murphy, senior vice president-marketing.

Television and Internet advertisements featured DaimlerChrysler Chairman Dieter Zetsche as “Dr. Z,” a German answer man who highlighted made-in-Germany technology found in Chrysler vehicles. The ads met with mixed success, however, because the message sometimes “got lost” amid details of the auto maker's aggressive incentive programs, Murphy says.

Part of a sweeping campaign with significant Internet and print-media presence, the ads again will shine a spotlight on the brand's technology — but in an ethnically neutral way, with an unseen narrator instead of an on-screen personality.

Chrysler's new tagline: “Engineered Beautifully.”