Adopting a new tagline that highlights its increasing focus on style and quality, Buick announced today that its new advertising slogan is “Exceptional by design,” replacing the previous “Buick. The craft of modern luxury” and a host of previous taglines.
In its description of the new tagline’s meaning, the brand focused heavily on the visual artistry of its vehicles, with the motto “reflecting the sculptural form and aesthetic philosophy” of its “beautiful new vehicle portfolio.”
Harkening back to its 1954 tagline – “the beautiful buy” – the Tri-Shield continued to stress the looks of its vehicles, along with quality, in its statement about the mission “Exceptional by design” is meant to express. The brand’s chief marketing officer Molly Peck declared that “beautiful design and quiet luxury sets Buick apart from the competition.”
Peck also invoked “bringing the Wildcat EV’s design language into production on the 2024 Encore GX and all-new Envista” as examples of this philosophy in action. The Tri-Shield’s marketers repeatedly cited the 2022 Buick Wildcat EV concept as the spearhead of this new design philosophy. Interestingly, though, imagery of the Buick Proxima Design Concept, a concept vehicle from GM China featuring gullwing doors, is used in the announcement rather than Wildcat images.
The brand also highlighted its recently increasing popularity, with 70 percent of its 2023 sales coming from buyers who are new to ownership of its vehicles. It noted quality as the second most important factor in peoples’ choice to purchase one of its vehicles, pointing to the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Initial Quality Study, where the Tri-Shield placed fourth out of 33, with only Dodge, Ram, and Alfa Romeo performing better.
The brand also released a promotional video for the “Exceptional by design” tagline. Featuring a 73-second runtime, the video once again featured the gullwing Buick Proxima Design Concept alongside the Wildcat as the “dream” leading into an adventurous current reality. You can watch the video here:
The brand also noted that it will have “an entirely refreshed portfolio” in line with its new tagline once the redesigned 2024 Buick Envision and 2025 Buick Enclave are launched in the near future. All of these designs, it says “offer sculptural designs, refined performance, modern interiors and thoughtful personal technologies” to its customers.
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Comments
Did anyone see the sneak peak interior of the Enclave in the video?!
The goal of “Styling” is to create aesthetically attractive features and elements of a vehicle. Basically, great visuals.
“Design” is more focused on optimizing the customer experience interacting with those great visual features and elements.
Respectfully / IMHO, extremely few vehicles offered today are “exceptional” in either discipline….
‘Exceptional By Design’ while making crossovers that look like everyone else’s. K.
Internet auto fans had TONS of laughs yesterday and this was by far the most laughable.
I would order a Wildcat in a second if it had an ICE engine.
This “poetic” marketing drivel is just like politicians who are constantly congratulating themselves while the world around them burns. From a design standpoint, Buick has been lost for a very long time. They have a boring group of anonymous, forgettable crossovers that could wear any brand’s logo and no one would be the wiser.
This obviously doesn’t apply to the horribly designed new Enclave.
How are little boxes exceptional by design? They look like everything else on the road. Maybe, try building something of exceptional design.
So does this mean they are going to build something unique and cool or just more boring crossover grocery getters?
This ad is a disaster. The images go by too fast, the shot of the 1930s Y-Job is irrelevant, the copy repetitive and unreal, the narrator mumbles and is at one point unintelligble, and the Buick shown at the end that you can buy is nothing like the concept shown all the way to that point.
Fire the agency now! (Unless it works better in Chinese.)
Judging by the latest offerings, that is, actual cars and not design studies, the slogan more apt would be “Generic by Design”.
“bringing the Wildcat EV’s design language into production on the 2024 Encore GX and all-new Envista” as examples of this philosophy in action.
They brought the worst part (imho) of the Wildcat design language into production. That being the ugly grill and outdated sharknose styling. Nothing else of that car is seen in production vehicles.
“offer sculptural designs, refined performance, modern interiors and thoughtful personal technologies”
Sculptural designs that are cookie cutter to other vehicles in the GM family and older non-GM brands I encourage you to compare greenhouses of the 2025 Acadia and Enclave vs a 2017 Honda Pilot. Minus some slight tweaking of the ‘D’ pillar they are eerily similar.
Refined performance from a buzzy 4 cyl. Laughable.
I’ll give them the modern interiors. It’s at least one area that GM is at least keeping up with the competition…again in my opinion.
This week, I took my C8 in for its first oil and trans filter change. They gave me a blazer for a loaner, and all I heard was the buzz sound coming through the dash from the 4 cyl every time I gave it gas. That really makes for a cheap, underpowered car sound; my mistake was not having the radio on; I guess if I had played some rap music really loud, the buzz would have been drowned out.
Bet they all still have black carpet, only black carpet.
Is this the Babylon Bee?
So to review… Buick’s line-up consists of four ubiquitous 4-door utility models, based upon shared GM global platforms and badge engineered with a single, anemic ICE engine.
All this is claimed to be the by-product of visionary thinking inspired by / best exemplified in a two-door concept passenger car that’ll likely never be produced.
I’d call that “being trapped in one’s own sunshine”.
Excellent term, 47.
Somewhere, someone needs to pull their head out of their a$$ and look at what they are producing! A CUV or SUV is not a design, and neither are the lack luster interiors with the flat screen TV plastered on the dash.
I bought the first-generation Buick Enclave because of the flowing lines; it was said to be designed after the hills on a golf course. I loved every angle of view; it was sexy in a way. The 2025 Enclave looks like it was designed after prison walls; it’s a box with a face only a mother could love. It should sell well as a taxi.
I dream of them keeping CarPlay in all their cars (since people like it)… and putting super cruise in the 2024 Envision (like they said they would)… and beginning to produce those 2024 Envisions (because it’s March of 2024 for goodness sakes).
Buick is dead……………………………………………………………………………………..