Opel Magazine. The magazine for Opel drivers and friends.

At almost three square kilometres, the Opel production plant in Rüsselheim is a town within a town. If hundreds of workshops and production facilities are its heart, then its brain is surely the Adam Opel Haus – a light-filled, ultramodern steel construction located in the south east of this huge plot. Tomás Caetano has worked here on the third floor, area “A1”, since last March. As Brand Marketing Director, he is responsible for the advertising of the Opel brand and its models. Caetano is certainly no stranger to advertising or cars: before he started at Opel, he had already worked for Mercedes and Toyota, as well as holding various positions at major advertising agencies. He has set himself a clear goal here in Rüsselheim – to create a fresh new image for the Opel brand.

Mr Caetano, in major advertising campaigns the Insignia is being described as: “The best car we’ve ever built.” That’s rather self-assured, isn’t it?

Yes, it is. But this pride isn’t misplaced. Opel has been making cars for over 100 years and all of our previous experiences, ideas and innovations have been incorporated into this exceptional model. I think that the following sentence perfectly describes the Insignia: it highlights the technical perfection of a car, it demonstrates our history and experience, and it shows just how seriously we take the slogan, “We live cars.”

With so many other changes set to take place, is this a slogan that you intend on keeping?

Yes. “We live cars” does not just apply to individual models. It is a sentence that describes our self-image as part of Opel and the standard that we have set for ourselves: to us, cars are not just products that we build and sell while at work. Cars are a passion to which we have devoted our whole lives. There is a big difference.

Customers often use the same argument against advertising and marketing: if you have good products, then you won’t need to advertise them. Do you agree?

If you turn it around, then there is truth in it: if you can’t build good cars, even the best advertising won’t help. But if you have a good product then you should let it be known. We can’t simply rely on word-of-mouth advertising – it takes far too long. That’s why we prefer to explain to people what it is that sets our cars apart. Doing so has made a great deal of difference to Opel over the years. Our cars win awards, they always rank highly in breakdown statistics, they are brimming with innovations and they look great. We just need to ensure that word gets around.

Is that harder than it sounds?

Yes, of course. After all, what constitutes a good car? Does it come down to technology? To design? Perhaps to the make? When discussing advertising we always try to ascertain what it is that really matters. I therefore think that, as advertising experts at Opel, our job is to explain to people what gives our cars a soul.

Do cars have a soul, Mr Caetano?

Yes, they do! Okay – perhaps not in the same sense that living beings have a soul, but they have a kind of charisma, character or personality that triggers an emotional response. A car is not a product that can only be described in technical terms.

What determines this character?

There isn’t a simple answer to that question. When we were children, most of us played Top Trumps with our friends in the playground. Of course, everybody wanted to trump the other players by having the cards with the most impressive technical data. Despite this, the most popular cars were not necessarily always the quickest or most powerful, and there were always a few cars that everybody wanted without ever really knowing why. Those were the cars that had their own personality, their own soul. To me, the new Astra GTC is a fine example of such a car.

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