They Call Me Baby Driver

A new study by R.L. Polk finds that 35% of first-time vehicle buyers considered the Internet their “most important” information tool, compared to 8.2 percent for television, 4.4% for magazines, 3.6% for newspaper and 1.1% for radio. (more )

Don’t cancel your advertising just yet.  The problem may not be the media as much as the message.

Lonnie Miller, managing director for the Polk Center for Automotive Studies says, “Generation Y is tuning out traditional advertising, and watching what they want, when they want.   But the results also indicate there is a demand for an enjoyable customer service and dealer experience. Forty-two percent said dealer treatment is "very important."

So if relationships are important and traditional mass media isn’t an important information tool, why do hundreds of car dealers stand before the camera slapping cars, doing handstands and yelling about their prices?  Why do hundreds more waste thirty or sixty-seconds of radio time telling consumers that their (brand) dealership carries (models)? 

Imagine that – my Chevrolet dealer carries Tahoe and the Jeep dealer has Wranglers.  Stop the presses and let me catch my breath. 

18 to 30 year-old consumers are asking, “What are you all about?  What are you going to do to make my experience enjoyable?  Tell me that in your advertising and I might look you up on the Internet.”

Creating breakthrough messages and developing relationships with customers through emerging as well as traditional media technologies will separate the winners from the losers in the next five years. 

It’s time to get started.  After all, we aren’t getting any younger

Comments

[Mark True]

Fear. That's the reason behind these great examples of bad advertising. In my humble opinion, auto dealers are, as a group, the most fearful marketers on the planet. They're scared to death to try anything new, look different from the competitors or give up the coop ad money the manufacturers give them to run their brand advertising and their glamour shot of their car going around a curvy mountain road.

Even Saturn, which started off so well as a brand apart from the rest, has succumbed to the fear and is now producing the same old stuff. They've killed their promising brand in its infancy.

As a marketer, my dream client has always been a local auto dealership with the stones to be different.