Take some short cuts: two new off-road vehicles from Indiana.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Opener - Brief Article

What do rock-climbing, hang-gliding thrill seekers have in common with suit-and-tie-clad Wall Streeters? Both are in the crosshairs of a new marketing salvo fired on behalf of the Indiana-made Hummer H2.

That's why advertising for the new consumer-focused incarnation of AM General's Hummer can be found in both The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic Adventure magazine, in both The New York Times and Wired. "Take Shorter Cuts," booms an ad geared toward outdoor adventurers. One beckoning to powerful execs describes the H2 as "Excessive--In a Rome at the height of its power sort of way."

Unlikely as it seems, there is a connection between the corner office and the edge of a cliff. Both are places where one can find risk-taking people, explains Paul Beckett, marketing manager for the H2, which is made by South Bend-based AM General but marketed out of Detroit by General Motors. At the edge of the cliff one will find what Beckett calls the Rugged Individualist, while the corner office is a prime habitat for the Successful Achiever.

Beckett says Rugged Individualists are the ones "who will probably use the vehicle as it is designed to be used," taking the driver and passengers to the remote places where they can mountain bike, hang-glide and go whitewater rafting. "They're really into doing things, not just dreaming about them," he observes. Such people, as targeted by Beckett's small corner of the GM marketing machine, are in their late 30s or early 40s, with household incomes of $125,000 and up.

The Successful Achievers, by contrast, are in their 40s, married with kids, taking home at least $150,000. "These are bankers, lawyers, doctors. They are interested more in how this vehicle makes them look. They'll use this vehicle as a symbol of their achievement," Beckett says.

"Both of these groups consider themselves daring, and daring is a word we use to define the essence of what the Hummer is all about. This is a daring vehicle to own," he continues. But he acknowledges that these two target groups will have extremely different definitions of what it means to be daring. For the Rugged Individualist, Beckett says, daring means skydiving and mountain climbing. "The Successful Achiever will say, 'I just bought 200,000 shares of a dotcom on margin last week, that's why...