No Man’s Blog

I was working on this one for a pitch and gathered some interesting information and case studies and thought it would be nice to share and hopefully to generate an insightful blogversation around this topic.

This review is by no mean exhaustive and some are not exclusively online but intergrated with and support traditional marketing initiatives but it gives you a broad overview on key trends in carmakers online marketing.

Carmakers are a leading category in digital marketing. Over the next two years automakers will increase their
online ad spending from 2005’s budget of $1.4 billion to $2.7 billion in 2007 (via eMarketer). As a category, their spending amounts to 17% (!) of the total online spending. They dare to experiment, build microsites to the highest level and recently GM went for the first online-only launch of their G5 Pontiac. (read more here and here)

Key Trends:

1. Microsite

• Sexy, sophisticated microsites using interactive
  & richest media are standard (Audi R8, Honda, Mercedes, Lexus, Mitsubishi, Jaguar)
• Celebration of model /car
  benefits / brand
• Focus on specs and performance
• Some aim to provide unique brand
  experience
• Extras are standard (downloads)

2. Partnerships / Product placement.

• Not an exclusive online trend but rather marketing strategy that is supported with online activities.
• Getting the right vehicles into
  the right movies is now an industry itself.
• Volkswagen has signed a deal with
  Universal studios, General Motors has a relationship with Warner Brothers and
  Ford has a deal with Sony’s Revolution Studios.
• Cadillac’s new urban look
  continues to dominate music videos.
• Online supports with
  extra activities, content, rewards and contests

3. Behavioural Targeting

• The current buzzword of online marketing, carmakers were quick to realise that the internet can reach in-market car buyers and
  specific demographic audiences more effectively than most other advertising
  types combined.
• GM partnering with in-market
  sites to generate interest in GM products.
• kbb.com built custom microsites
  for the GMC, Buick and Pontiac brands. Inviting shoppers to compare GM
  brand vehicles to their market competitors, and enabled this comparison with online
  tools right on the site. (Kbb.com sees more than 10 million
  unique visitors each month, with more than 70 percent
  of them planning to buy a new car within six months.
• What made this campaign so
  powerful was that it was from a credible third party - not from GM itself. the validity and  factual comparisons from a third party site made the comparison  tools for GM   brands all the more substansive.
• In August 2006 G5 sales exceeded Pontiac’s goals by 185%
• Read more here and here

4. Branded entertainment

• This trend is growing and can be parted to three different categories.
• Hollywood - getting a hot-shot director / actors to produce high quality short films. BMW films are still considered the most talked about branded content campaign, the films have been watched hundred of thousends of times on YouTube after being removed from the website in 2005.
• UGC - carmakers have been experimenting with user generated content for a while, see for example Honda Crave campaign and the Chevy super-bowl ad challenge.
• Reality - VW Rabbit launch - the gypsy cab project from Crispin Porter & Bugusky is one of my favourites. A beautifully crafted cultural experiment to learn about city driving, it was "an attempt to uncover and document (on hidden
  cameras) all the things that make urban driving truly unique". See how they built it all on Apple site

5. Brand utility

• This is my favourite trend and I hope to see more of these in the future -its beyond branded content - all about value for the consumer.
• Creating something people need. Something tangible and useful that plays integral role in consumer’s lives.
• Like the Chevy Avalanche 12 weekends microsite in partnership with MSN. Its all about

   

  great weekend excursions, the site provides valuable advice on all things outdoor adventure related.

6. Experimental / social media

• various new media experimental projects that carmakers are toying with. For example:
• Opel C’mon experiment rolls out innovative campaign to engage urban
  twentysomethings for the new Corsa. Read more here.
• Social Networking sites -Jeep has launched interactive campaign for a concert series
  promoting its small(ish) SUV, and it’s relying heavily on MySpace and Facebook. See also Yaris
• MINI virals and games
• Nissan fantastic Seven Days in a Sentra, a reality/blog project with the comedian Marc Horowitz.
• Pontiac is coming to Second Life 
• In April, Toyota which was also the first carmaker to enter Second Life placed its Scion on whyville.com an online interactive community populated almost entirely by 8-14 year olds in the hope that the kids will influence their parents and grow up to buy a Toyota themselves. (10 days into the campaign, visitors to the site has used the word ‘Scion’ in online chats more than 78K times; hundreds of virtual Scions were purchased using ‘clams’  - the Linden $$$ on whyville -  and the community "Club Scion" was visited 33K times.)
• Ford Bold Moves campaign to revamp its stodgy corporate image and appeal to new types
  of consumers. It is "A weekly updated video documentary series that takes you
  inside Ford as it attempts one of the largest corporate turnarounds in history." (read more here)

Conclusions:

Carmakers are evidently a leading category in online and new media marketing. They are building microsites to the highest standard and spend great sums of money to reach their target audience (and realising that it is cheaper and more effective than traditional media).  While some of the projects are cumbersome and sometimes seem useless (the effectivness of some of these new forms of brand building and sales promotions is yet to be seen) these brands deserve kudos for daring to experiment and for their quick acknowledgment that online is the way to go. The coolest projects to my view are those where online and ‘real’ world are interrelated in some way and support each other like the VW rabbit or the Chevy weekends microsite.

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