Events are still an important platform for selling cars, says John Thorne,
president and CEO of Cleveland-based Automotive Events. But the definition of an “event” might be growing a bit more fluid.
Yes, ride-and-drive opportunities at races, sports venues, music festivals and the like are still crucial. But auto promotional campaigns are both widening their scope to earn media coverage and social buzz with large online projects, and zooming down to focus on the dealer lot, where QR codes and augmented reality campaigns can unlock engaging content for shoppers standing right next to cars.
“It’s still all about getting butts in seats,” Thorne says. “But if a consumer can open an app, point their phone at a barcode decal and see the car’s wheels spin or see a ballplayer toss to them, they’re going to share that event in social media, tweet it or post it to Facebook. Car makers and dealers have come to place great value on that.”
At the other end of the scale, one of Automotive’s biggest campaigns of 2011 was a 7,500-mile road trip from Tokyo to Los Angeles in a Suzuki Kizashi sport sedan, in the company of reporters from Motor Trend and several other motor publications. The trip wound from a Suzuki plant in Japan, along Russia’s Siberian “Road of Bones”, across the Bering Strait and down through Canada to L.A.
“Tokyo to L.A.: The Hard Way” was conceived as a campaign to get earned media coverage, both from the embedded reporters but also from posts that the participants made to video sites YouTube and Vimeo and to a dedicated page on the main Suzuki web site.
“Motor Trend published two issues with about 20 pages worth of coverage, along with several other off-road and motorcycle magazine,” Thorne says. “So they got an awful lot of bang for their buck.”
He thinks auto makers will engage in more such grand-scale stunt promotions, especially if they get creative about targeting media. “You could uncover angles that would be interesting to culinary titles, say, or fashion magazines, and make the project work even harder. It then becomes a lifestyle event as well as a campaign promoting the vehicle.
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