Now my friend really is not going to buy a Lexus.
It all started last November, when Lexus and Conde Nast invited him to dinner and a Michael Feinstein concert. You know Feinstein: the pianist who tutored under Ira Gershwin and recorded George’s hits. He’s not Sting or Third Eye Blind, but my friend is a big Feinstein fan, so he was psyched. Best part was, his wife got an invitation too, so they were up for four tickets – and dinner. They spent the weekend planning who they’d ask to the late-November concert. They hired a sitter. She rescheduled a business trip. He hummed old show tunes.
“I was totally surprised,” he says. “Here was something of value that we couldn’t get anywhere else. A whole evening like that? Wow, thanks!”
Lexus was throwing the party to launch the LS 430 (starting price: $54,005) and had room for about 300 at the Navy Pier in Chicago. There were other intimate, one-of-a-kind evenings in New York City, Los Angeles, and Fort Lauderdale, all tied to the spread ads Lexus ran in Conde Nast magazines depicting creme de la creme professionals (singer Heather Headley, golf course designer Robert Trent Jones, Jr.) and the car.
Some background: My friend is no run-of-the-mill dealership prospect. He spent 15 years as a marketing journalist. His wife is an advertising executive. These people know from direct-mail pitches.
So he called right away, Friday evening, to RSVP. He got a recording that said to call between nine and five on weekdays. When he called Monday morning, the event was full. “Sorry,” the operator said abruptly. When my friend asked how that could be, since he had just gotten the invitation, the operator “got snippy.” (He talks like that. He’s a Feinstein fan.)
“I didn’t realize it was a race. I thought it was an invitation,” my friend told me. “I felt like I’d been invited to a party I didn’t really have a chance to attend.”
It gets worse.
The call center Lexus hired to handle reservations booked 300 people before it started turning them away. Lexus even rationed tickets to local dealers (they got only four apiece) to keep seats free for the prospects. But that night, only 200 or so people showed up. That hurt, says Lexus sales promotion manager Wayne Szabo. “When we invite owners we get a darned good showing. But with prospects, it’s hard to know.” Only a quarter of the invitations went to owners; the other 75 percent went to Conde Nast subscribers.
One guest that night – an executive from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Szabo recalls – told a Lexus staffer, “I have 10 friends worth millions who would give their left arms to be here tonight.” Szabo sounded a little achy in his own left arm as he told the story.
My own friend was not consoled to hear that 10 millionaires missed out, too. “I’m pissed people said yes and then didn’t show up.”
At least he wasn’t in New York City, where Tony winner Headley performed for 240 at the chic Firebird restaurant. It was such a hot ticket that the call center – Travel Counselor Service, the same center handling Feinstein – got really rude turning people away. Adamantly rude. Beyond-New York rude. One Lexus owner, a judge, and her surgeon-husband were so bitterly disappointed that Lexus ended up compensating them – and another half-dozen folks who complained.
Szabo himself was darned disappointed in the call center. But it was too late to replace Travel Counselor once the invitations were mailed, so all that RSVP rudeness left a blemish on the events.
“It wasn’t a big issue, but it was bigger than it should have been,” Szabo says. “You know what it’s like: If there’s one thing that makes you unhappy about an evening out – they don’t offer to take your coat, or the coffee’s not hot – then a fabulous dinner turns into `fair.'”
Part of the problem was Firebird. Conde Nast picked the place, which seats only 240 in small rooms. Lexus had to put up video monitors so diners could see Headley perform. And there was no room for even one more chair for the disgruntled judge. “When you’re up against fire code standards that won’t let you squeeze in another 15 people, that makes it really hard to host an event,” says Szabo, who credits lead agency Team One Advertising, El Segundo, with getting all the “fabulous” details right in each city.
New York City, at least, was a full house. Lexus may have had to turn fans away, but at least it didn’t snub them only to come up with empty seats.
“I feel his pain on the built-in problem of this kind of promotion,” my friend concedes. “But I’ll still hold it against them the next time I decide on a car.”
Too many folks – inside Torrance headquarters, too – heard a wrong note when this phone rang.
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