DCX did spend vast sums of money on marketing Maybach -- they targeted the wealthiest individuals directly through high-profile promotions (parties and sponsored events). Make no mistake about it, DCX made sure the people who needed to know what Maybach was, were well informed.

Doesn't seem enough to me. i'm sure that mercedes did do some publicity for maybach on some superlative parties, but to impress RR's and Bentley's costumers you have to be more "agressive" with your marketing strategies. RR and Bentley do the same kind of publicity for their products but they also depend on their history and well-known names.
Anyway.. I actually think that out of the 2 mistakes I mentioned, Design was the bigger one!

I think it all boils down to a combination of what we've all said here. Design and lack of name recognition. I never knew what a "Maybach" was either until it came out and I read up on it. The design wasn't impressive enough to overcome such a lack luster design to begin with. If it had been something stunning and off the charts designwise it would have been able to overcome the name recognition thing, but the next thing would be whether or not Rolls/Bentley customers would be impressed. It is easy to impress people that can't afford the car. When I go to Detroit or Chicago's auto shows, people ooh and aww all day long, but not a single one of them (including me) can even think about a 300K car! So are ooohs and ahhs don't mean squat..lol! It is the very rich and they're so "branded" to the point where a new brand would have to offer a stunning design both inside and out to overcome this. Look at how long Lexus took to become something in the U.S. and they still aren't anything in Europe or Japan despite them making some very, very good cars. Mercedes could have avoided all of this by calling it is Mercedes like they originally planned.

I think we're pretty much all in agreement overall, but differ on some of the smaller details. I mean they flew the car into downtown Manhattan via helicopter so they weren't quiet about the Maybach's introduction.

M

Yeh, and before that it was on the Queen Mary 2. That's as agressive marketing as it can get in this class without going over the top. Even I remember the Maybach launch but can't remember much about the RR Phantom launch...

I never read this post before Marcus ...you make some excellent points here.