Saab GB's marketing and PR director, David Pugh, likes to talk. As well as enthusing about the Swedish automotive brand, he chatters away throughout our photo shoot, touching on subjects that range from anecdotes about his time at General Motors' marketing department in Detroit, working on the Buick marque, to comparing life there with Saab's erstwhile UK base at Luton.
Pugh's additional responsibility for PR means our meeting is punctuated by mobile phone calls; he confidently swats away queries from colleagues and journalists alike. For someone so effortlessly talkative, it must have been difficult coming to a brand that for so long has had little to say.
Over decades, Saab successfully carved out a niche as a sensible premium marque for those seeking upmarket motoring without the showiness of other luxury brands. However, over the past few years, with a lack of new models for dealerships to promote and GM's stated intention to rid itself of Saab, sales slumped.
Stability regained
Saab sold only about 7500 cars in the UK last year, according to the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders, down more than 50% year on year; its market share fell to 0.75%. Uncertainty over the marque's future caused fleet sales to plummet, while GM's threats to close it hardly inspired consumer confidence.
For a brand that regularly spent £20m on advertising in the UK alone, Pugh was given a comparatively negligible budget with which to convince consumers that Saab remained a going concern. However, following its sale to Dutch sports-car manufacturer Spyker in January, and with plans to roll out a host of new models over the next two years, the 45-year-old marketer is now confident that Saab can return to its former glories.
Pugh is one of a small number of managers who have agreed to leave GM to join the newly independent Saab. A full team is yet to be formed to cover sales and marketing duties, and the business has to settle into new headquarters at Cranfield. Despite having worked solely for GM to date, Pugh claims that this is a one-off opportunity to reshape an established brand.
'Effectively it's a chance to build a company, and within it my team, from scratch,' he says. 'It's almost a completely clean piece of paper. I'll never get another chance to create a marketing team and a way of working like this, as you normally inherit so much established structure. It's been a bumpy road, but it now seems as though we're arriving.'
That sense of journey was captured in an emotive ad for the brand rolled out in March, around the time the sale to Spyker was completed. The spot thanked Saab customers, stating: 'To all of you who never stopped believing. Thank you.'
The next big challenge facing Pugh in his extended role is the launch of a global campaign to celebrate the introduction of Saab's new flagship model, the 9-5. In the UK, the marque has rolled out a series of teaser TV and print ads, created by McCann Erickson Birmingham. A full-scale campaign breaks early next month.
The primary 9-5 ad push, created by Saab's Stockholm-based lead agency, Lowe Brindfors, will carry the tagline 'Anything but ordinary'. Executions will emphasise the Swedish heritage of the brand, with images of elks and lines such as 'So Swedish', as well as highlighting some of the technological benefits of the model. 'The campaign will have a classic Saab look and feel, very clean and Scandinavian, and will be a natural evolution of past campaigns,' says Pugh.
He is confident that Spyker will not look to carry out any radical overhaul of the Saab brand. Despite the turmoil endured by the manufacturer over the past few years, including the failure of its proposed sale to Swedish high-end sports-car maker Koenigsegg, the marketer is adamant that the brand remains the company's single strongest asset.
'The brand never had problems, in my view; if Saab did have problems, it was with the product portfolio,' says Pugh. 'From a brand point of view, there is no desire to perform any major repositioning. We are also not aiming to massively gain market share. We'd like to get back to the levels we were at a couple of years ago, but not to go beyond that.'
Once the company has reduced its break-even target, Pugh agrees with Spyker chief executive Victor Muller that Saab can operate as a 'niche, premium manufacturer'. 'We aren't looking to (lure) lots of customers from other brands, we just need to get back the drivers who have previously bought Saabs,' adds Pugh. 'There are more than enough of them to be profitable.'
Despite the temptation to think ill of those traditional Saab buyers who have migrated to German rivals such as Audi and Mercedes-Benz, Pugh is gushing in his appraisal of his prospective customers, describing them as 'intelligent' and 'very independently minded'.
'We are fortunate that we have globally consistent consumers,' he adds. 'The type of person who buys a Saab is typically very inquisitive, confident and comfortable with alternative solutions - they don't need the reassurance of an accepted premium brand.'
Pugh speaks with particular pride about a Saab-sponsored supplement on bio-fuels that was published by The Independent last year. 'We got some prominent people who were "anti" bio-fuels to contribute, and deliberately took no control over editorial,' he says. 'You accept that you are talking to an intelligent audience and they will make their own decisions.'
Furthermore, the marketer believes the core Saab attributes of safety and efficient performance are perfectly suited to today's austere environment, and that the brand has 'accidentally' acquired the potential to become fashionable once more.
'If you spent a fortune on a consultancy to create a new premium automotive brand from scratch, you'd probably come back with something that looked pretty similar to Saab,' claims Pugh. 'This is one of the reasons I was attracted to it - it seems to be in a great position.'
To echo Saab's latest strapline, the situation facing Pugh is 'anything but ordinary'. He presides over a 60-year-old brand, but has been freed from the baggage and expectation that comes with being part of a big organisation like GM.
With further new models, including the 9-4X and an updated 9-3, due for launch in 2011 and 2012, Pugh may have finally found the right words to tempt lapsed Saab customers back into the fold.
INSIDE WORK
1988-1992: Various engineering roles in the rail industry
1992-1994: MBA, London Business School
1994-2000: Various commercial roles, rising to comptroller, retail sales, Vauxhall UK
2000-2003: Assistant brand manager, Buick Motor Division, General Motors, Detroit
2003-2006: Brand manager, large cars, rising to group product manager, small and compact cars, Vauxhall Motors, Luton
2006-2010: General manager, sales and marketing strategy, Saab GB, Luton
2010-present: Marketing and PR director, Saab GB, Cranfield
OUTSIDE WORK
Family: Married, two children
Favourite cars of all time: Saab Aero X concept car and Jaguar XJ13
Favourite movie: The Usual Suspects
Favourite holiday destination: California
All-time favourite brand: Apple.