Porsche Cayenne: the buyers said yes, the community said no

Case study · Marketing 465 · Community vs. Audience

Porsche’s first SUV became a commercial success with a new audience while its most devoted enthusiast community rejected it for years, which shows that winning an audience and winning a community are two different jobs.

The situation

Until the early 2000s, Porsche built sports cars. Its identity rested on speed, performance and, as a Harvard Business School case puts it, a bold and masculine spirit. Porsche also had one of the most devoted enthusiast communities in the car world, with owners’ clubs, rituals and busy online forums.

Porsche wanted a product line less exposed to the ups and downs of the sports car market. The answer was an SUV. The Cayenne was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in 2002 and launched in 2003.

The challenge

An SUV made business sense. Porsche’s own community did not see it that way. To many enthusiasts, the Cayenne broke the basic promise of the brand. The HBS case notes that typical Cayenne buyers were more safety-minded and family-focused than traditional Porsche owners.

What they did

Porsche launched the Cayenne with advertising that tied it to the sports car family instead of treating it as a separate product. Print lines included ‘Another twisted branch on the family tree’ and ‘If you lose it in the parking lot, everyone can direct you to it,’ according to HBS Working Knowledge.

What Porsche could not do was talk its enthusiasts into accepting the car. HBS senior lecturer Jill Avery studied conversations in an online Porsche brand community for two years before and two years after the launch. The car did not win them over.

What happened

The community pushed back in three ways, Avery found. Members derogated Cayenne drivers (‘not us’), the product (‘not a real Porsche’) and even the brand itself. Some said they would now call themselves ‘911 owners’ instead of Porsche owners. One wrote, ‘So much for the Porsche Mystique.’ Much of the criticism was framed around gender, with the SUV dismissed as a car for suburban mothers.

The HBS case describes the same pattern offline. Some members opposed letting Cayenne buyers into Porsche clubs. Some drivers withheld the traditional Porsche wave to Cayenne owners. Meanwhile, the audience bought it.

• The Cayenne quickly became Porsche’s most popular model (Motor Authority, 2022).
• Porsche reached one million Cayennes built across three generations in 2020, 18 years after its debut (Canadian Auto Dealer, 2020).
• Porsche’s sales rose 31% in the first half of 2013, and women’s share of sales grew from 8% to 15% (HBS Working Knowledge, 2013).

Why it worked

An audience and a community are different groups with different relationships to a brand. The audience is everyone who might buy. For them, the Cayenne offered a Porsche badge and performance in a practical vehicle. The community is the group whose identity is wrapped up in the brand. For them, the Cayenne threatened what being a Porsche person meant.

Advertising can reach an audience. It cannot change what a community believes about itself. Members defended their identity by drawing a line between ‘real’ Porsches and the new car, and between ‘real’ owners and the new ones.

Where it gets complicated

By sales, the Cayenne was a success, and the community’s resistance did not stop it. That raises a fair question: did the community matter? The answer depends on the time frame. Enthusiasts carry a brand’s credibility, its word of mouth and its stories. A brand that keeps overriding them risks becoming just another luxury badge.

There is also a sampling problem. The voices Avery studied were the most vocal members of one online community, not all Porsche owners. Loud forum posts are not the same as a whole customer base.

A note on sources: some accounts say Cayenne owners were banned from Porsche enthusiast sites and that a TV campaign failed to change minds. We could not verify those claims and have left them out. The documented reaction was mockery, exclusion and resistance to club membership.

The marketing principle

You can buy an audience’s attention, but you cannot force a community to accept something that challenges its identity. When a change touches what a community believes it stands for, bring the community in early, explain the reason and give members a role, or plan for years of resistance even if sales succeed.

Sources

• Porsche: The Cayenne Launch (HBS Case 511-068), Harvard Business School Publishing (2011)
• Should Men’s Products Fear a Woman’s Touch?, HBS Working Knowledge (2013)
• The Porsche Cayenne is now 20 years old, Motor Authority (2022)
• Porsche celebrates a million units of the Cayenne, Canadian Auto Dealer (2020)

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