The Web as we know it is a teenager, but car makers seem to think it’s a baby: cute, with much potential, but inscrutable and insomnia-inducing. One could think of numerous, obvious new applications for automotive marketing, but we don’t see them in practice. Click on a manufacturer’s site to get an instant, confirmed test drive appointment for a car of your ideal configuration? Nope. Can you publicize your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a dealer on a maker’s site (similar to what yelp.com is enabling for all kinds of services)? No dice. Indeed, most commercial car stuff on the web is conventional, and boring. But recently I’ve heard of some Web-based brand-building that is supposed to be better. Here are three examples from the UK.
Volkswagen has created an online racing game for its new Golf GTI. Players can take to a 30ft by 25ft slot car track and negotiate hairpins, straights and narrow bridges. (They use the UK term “Scalextric” in the game, but you don’t have to worry about this). In other words, it’s a simulation of a racing simulation from the 1950s. If you’re not miserable at it, then be prepared to get a message saying “you’ve registered a lap time of x seconds and you’ve qualified for a chance to win a GTI for 3 months!”
It sounds incredibly lame, but the implementation is quite charming (in an English way). I doubt it works in non-British cultures though, and I am sure it wouldn’t translate into any real-world sales if the VW GTI weren’t so good. Playing slot cars is fun when you’re spending two hours with pals, whooping and drinking; but as a video game, it gets sad after about 15 minutes.
It’s a marketing maxim that men like games but women like stories. In that vein, Renault TV is less about how James May would spend an afternoon and more about trying to make a brand sympathetic to a general (i.e., more female) audience. The French manufacturer says it’s an alternative to advertising. Apparently, it offers “more varied messages, creating deeper audience engagement,” by focusing on people, through features on Renault enthusiasts and celebrity drivers. (Renault enthusiasts? I didn’t know they still existed.)
Launch programs include a BBC star driving his vintage Renault 4 from London to Mongolia, entertainingly telling us how some Kazakhs who helped him en route were “absolute idiots”. Another of several well-produced clips is about a bird sanctuary in the Camargue. (Anti-SUV note of the day: you don’t need one to transport injured flamingos or building beams).
I also enjoyed the report on the the cars that a former Renault head of R&D has collected, featuring as it does delectable Alpines and Spyders. Included, and not to be missed: footage of the legendary F1 Espace, a minivan that did 0-60 in two seconds. Along with a feature on the R5/LeCar (believe it or not, we Europeans loved that car), it tries to reinforce the brand’s heritage. Conceivably, this sort of entertaining storytelling can strengthen a brand.
However, the “Autotainment” section, where a PR lady pumps current Renaults, is mostly boring and unbelievable—the kind of advertising nobody wants to watch. So, it almost defeats Renault TV’s premise: to invest in the brand by humanizing it, and not just to push product.
Honda’s “C It Now” (CIN) is a world’s first: a dealership-to-home video technology that “promises to revolutionise car sales.” The idea: buyers in their homes can take a live, detailed tour of a new or used car via a camcorder held by someone at a dealership. A demonstration looks promising, but I’m not convinced this is the future.
What I need from a used-car salesman is his reliable word that a car is as described, or, alternatively, I need a scoring system à la eBay. A video can’t prove to me there is no dog smell, out-of alignment suspension or scratched paint. Also, despite a useful training video, I’m skeptical about the average used-car salesman’s willingness and ability to do a good video presentation.
Honda says a car can now be purchased without the buyer seeing it in the metal, but would you? On the other hand, Honda hints at the real reason why CIN might become popular: “CIN allows people to shop for cars at their leisure, a real bonus for those who don’t want to make the trip to a showroom.” In other words: if you don’t like the looks of that pesky salesman, don’t worry about him getting pushy. Just close your browser.
Why are all car sites flash?
After the Carpocalypse/Carmageddon comes to an end, I foresee a future where all automotive inquiry, shopping, comparison, and purchasing will be done online. The whole concept of a dealership, a middle-man who ads no value whatsoever to the buying experience, is obsolete. Parts & Service can be performed by any authorized shop, independent of the sales channel. Service is seen by dealers as a profit center, NOT for what it is: customer retention. In fact other than warranty work, it is just plain insanity to bring a car back to a dealer service department anymore. Dealerships are a huge unspoken part of what is killing the car business. They create mountains of ill will among consumers who associate them with the manufacturer.
Once shed of this dealership barrier to their own customers, the manufacturers can market and sell directly via the wonders of the TCP/IP protocol. The only useful purpose of today’s dealers is test drives, and that can be easily replaced by “Test & Delivery Centers”… with or without a service depts.
Until then, the manufacturers will only see their web properties as brochureware.
–chuck
@Robert Schwartz: Because it’s all flash and no substance.
Advertising itself is a difficult industry. Playing (preying) on the whims of consumers, and trying to steal your attention long enough to convince you of your need to buy buy buy. The web is just a highly focused, tightly wound, little corner of the whole advertising mess.
Automotive advertising boils down to this: show me why your car is the right car for me on measurable, tangible, and accurate metrics. If you can do that, without pandering to a specific age-group (I’m looking at you, Ford Fiesta), then that’s a good thing. If all you have are cheesy “viral” ads, then good for you, there are clinics where you can get tested anonymously.
Until then, the manufacturers will only see their web properties as brochureware.
This is the heart of the problem. Dealers and manufacturers see websites as nothing but interactive brochures that are supposed to entice victims….eh….”customers” into coming inside the dealership. It’s why you won’t see any meaningful information on the website — you’re not supposed to get it there, you’re supposed to bring yourself down to the dealer.
People will buy a car online, if only they had concrete assurances that 1)the product they bought is EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED, and 2)if they don’t have to deal with the less-than-honorable sales personnel lurking within the dealership.
@Tommy: rim shot
You can do everything over the internet except for a test drive. That, however, is crucial.
Chuck,
Kendahl,
I agree. OEMs should provide test drives; everything else can be provided by maker-own websites, consolidators and independents (like Amazon?)
I would never even consider a vehicle seriously without driving it first. The problem is, it’s such a hoop-jumping exercise to get a drive in anything nowadays that I feel like I’m not valued as a potential customer when I go to a dealer to try something. That’s if they let me – many will just flip you off if you aren’t prepared to sign on the line first (so you want me to commit to buying it before I try it, when I’m not certain I want to buy it until you give me a test drive?). Then we get into the whole human element – dealing with a hungry salesperson, and often being forced to endure their “company” on the drive because of insurance woes.
The solution, I think, is to have a test-drive ordering system online. You go on, see what is available locally, and once you make your selection the car is delivered to your driveway within a day. You are given a brief overview (so there is still a sales element), sign the waivers, then they hand you the keys and off you go. I’d be content with a few hours to get a good feel for the car.
I know there are test drive booking systems already, but all they are is an advance notice of you showing up and asking for a drive at the dealership. They are totally redundant.
It’s pie in the sky, but it’s how it should be done.
@JEC:
Not a bad idea, but how do you make sure that someone doesn’t just order a test drive of something like a G8 GXP and then spend the next two hours doing burnouts and bouncing it off the rev limiter?
how do you make sure that someone doesn’t just order a test drive of something like a G8 GXP and then spend the next two hours doing burnouts and bouncing it off the rev limiter?
Tell the test driver that a black box with GPS has been installed. Hoonage will incur a significant, special fee on the credit card used to secure a deposit for the test drive. Or modify the limiter to a lower rpm via an OBD-II computer interface just for the test drive. Anyone genuinely interested in the vehicle wouldn’t want the virgin engine abused, right?
Hoonage will incur a significant, special fee on the credit card used to secure a deposit for the test drive. Or modify the limiter to a lower rpm via an OBD-II computer interface just for the test drive. Anyone genuinely interested in the vehicle wouldn’t want the virgin engine abused, right?
I wouldn’t want to abuse a new engine, but if I’m looking to buy a car with a performance bias, I would want to explore those capabilities a bit during a test drive. If I am scared I might get significantly charged for doing this, I wouldn’t want to drive the car. Sure, they could give test drivers a legal document showing exactly what they can and can’t do, but that’s complicating the process even more.
If special fees, waivers, credit card deposits, and de-tuned engines are going to be part of the “online ordered test drive experience” I think I’d just rather take a test drive with my neighborhood salesguy.
Here’s what I want from a car’s website:
DETAILS!
I want information that I can’t get from a brochure or even from the dealer. I’m an analyst at heart and want all the nitty-gritty details, even if I have to use google to figure out what they are talking about…
I want pictures of every part of the car. I want to see a picture that clearly shows where the oil filter is, so I can see how tough it would be to change the oil.
I want to know what specific alloy the cams are made of, what rockwell number the gears are hardened to. I want detailed pictures and diagrams of the suspension, the transmission and engine.
I want recordings of how the engine sounds at idle and at wot.
You get the picture. Anyway, I get really disappointed when I go to a website for a car and realize it is just a brochure done in Flash!
JEC, I’ve had the opposite experience with test drives. I’ve walked into a dealership unannounced and unscheduled for a test drive of a specific model and trim level probably fifteen times and was in the car driving it almost immediately, with very little discussion. Sometimes the salesman comes along, but that doesn’t bother me as I wouldn’t want to take the chance of letting some degenerate damage my demo cars either. It actually surprises me when they let me take the car out on my own, though I don’t personally abuse rental or demo cars.
Whenever I go to a manf website, it’s usually to see what colors and what option combinations (packages) are available. Then I get turned off (pretty much as soon as the Flash starts loading) about how there’s no picture of the cloth upholstery and manual AC controls I want (usually not even available), how I must spend an extra $2-4k just to get a sunroof (but be cursed with the Blose and fully automatic AC), and how there are no colors besides conservative shades of gray. Then I remember that these car sites aren’t intended for a ‘sophisticated’ buyer, so I roll my eyes and feel sympathy for the poor unwashed car-buyer masses, and I go do something else…
In summary: Option packages suck, and car websites aren’t intended for us.
Interesting commentary on mfg and dealer sites. So many of them are designed with SMO (shiny metal objects) syndrome as the promise of more business. The problem isn’t so much the mfg and the dealers as it is the site developers and vendors that “sell” to the mfg/dealer the idea that their high flash, high visual engagement will result in more leads, and most importantly more high quality leads. The poor mfgs/dealers listening to every/any sales person that might have an idea to drive more leads happily parts with their money and dives right into the flash gadgetry abyss.
My question: what about the portals – AutoTrader, Cars.com, Vehix etc. Overall good/no-good? What about how they make us search and their results? What do you think?