Markethaus Musings

Having been critical of the current Ad mantra, I do need to defend the auto ad practitioners at agencies and car companies and dealership. It's always easy to sit back, from the comfort of my warm, cozy blog, as the snow piles up on my suburban driveway. I'd like to take a moment to try and explain how we got here.

Imagine being put in the position of VP Marketing/Advertising at a car company and your job is to promote a car. To get to that point in your career, it's likely you've had to fight your way up the corporate ladder. At most companies, what you've learned is that no one gets punished for doing the obvious...but if you try something, "unusual" and fail...you're career ABS fails in a highspeed turn. This promotes risk aversion. The, "you never get fired for hiring IBM" mantra of days past. Much easier to go the "tried and true" direction. And if it goes wrong well...we did what we were supposed to.

Some examples:

• On the launch team for a certain Ford car...we discussed ways to build buzz pre-launch by talking to current owners...but focusing on both sides of the equation...what is right, what is wrong...how do we make it right. But let's do it on a large scale...talk to tens/hundreds of thousands. All of these folks are going to buy a car in the next 24 months...or tell 10 of their friends about a great experience.
  
• nice idea...too expensive...we wouldn't have enough money for the "roadblock" media/ad campaign that runs on the NFL.
  

• Losing market share to certain competitors...on Plymouth. One of my co-workers suggested we use examples of those who had stayed with the brand or even switched from current "au courant" brands (like Honda) and reinforce those messages with current and potential owners. It would require us to focus our marketing on current owners and competitive owners
• Mmmm...risky...can we just do the broad ad campaign? But like the idea! Atta boy. A gold star moment for not executing.

• More recently...brand losing share to key competitors. Devise an interesting plan to intercept competitive shoppers and re-direct them...about 100,000/month (about 10,000 new car/truck sales generated from these shoppers). Requires personal conversation with each shopper to discuss options. In test, this increases purchase rates of the "not considered" brand by 2 to 3x.
  
• Agency, with support from client decides to do direct mail instead...at higher cost and negative return. In fact, in 10 years, the agency/client have never produced a positive ROI "conquest" campaign with this method. But it's safe. And it's been done before...and no one was fired.
  

Yes...the corporate safety net looms large. Kind of like strapping yourself to an anvil and swimming...because that's what the previous guy/gal did.

How to fight this? Couple of thoughts:

• Analysis...careful analysis
• Make sure you have data...good data
• Make sure you have actual consumer voices supporting the idea...whether clips on video or recorded responses...amazing how real stories can sell better than a powerpoint
• Use less powerpoint (easy to get lost in fades and colorful bar graphs)
• Sell...over and over
• I know...booooring. But if you believe it, make others believe. Most great ideas die a slow corporate death because the anti-bodies kill it. I find that there are people out there who are willing to commit career suicide for a good idea well executed. Just have to keep talking until you see someone's eyes light up.
• Go straight to the top
• This fails 99/100 times. But just one time, a senior exec will say..."mmm...let's give it a try." You may still get ground into mincemeat by the next row of execs. But they'll think twice because there was some support from upstairs.
  

More on the calculus of word of mouth marketing in the car business next time. Now, I have to go and listen to some more Spanish guitar and flamenco records I found in the garage.