On my way up to The Cape last weekend I noticed a billboard with a common ad phrase, probably used (over and over again) since long before the days of Mad Men: “Often imitated, never duplicated.”

Was it for a local paving company? No. An annoying low-cost furniture outlet? Nope. It was for Lexus.

Now I’m not sure if it was for Lexus, the brand or a local Lexus dealer (though I’ll assume the latter). It doesn’t make a difference. A Lexus dealer is Lexus, the brand.

When you sell a product that is synonymous with luxury, you need to be the keeper of your brand. That is, you need to ensure consistency across all media channels – even if that channel is partially or wholly funded by a distributor or dealer.

Otherwise, you end up wasting hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars on billboards with the same boring headline that’s been used to describe the most mundane products for decades and can now be seen on the bumper stickers of doublewides and t-shirts adorning arrogant teenagers trying to be cute.

In other words: Mass Consumer, USA. And that’s no place for Lexus.