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News and Industry Features
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2010 Ford Fusion is Motor Trend's 'Car of the Year'
Motor Trend on Tuesday named the 2010 Ford Fusion its "Car of the Year." The award marked the second consecutive year that Ford Motor Co. claimed one of the influential magazine's top honors, The Detroit News reports. Last year, the 2009 F-150 pickup claimed "Truck of the Year." Ford's midsize sedan beat out 22 other contenders, including the new Toyota Prius, Nissan 370Z and BMW 7 Series. Members of the magazine's editorial staff told the News they were impressed by the improvements Ford has made to every aspect of the Fusion since it debuted in 2005. "Ford has proven its resilience in these tough times by delivering to market a car with broad appeal to a broad range of consumers," said Motor Trend Editor-in-Chief Angus MacKenzie. Despite a tough market the Fusion has set a new full-year sales record this year, gaining market share and becoming the best-selling car from any U.S. automaker. The Motor Trend award is considered influential and it typically provides a marketing bonanza for the winning automaker.
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Report: Auto advertising to inch up in 2010
Auto advertising has been in a slump 2005, but it should improve next year, says a new report from Borrell Associates, released last Friday. The total auto advertising across all media segments will inch up 4.1 percent to a little over $19.1 billion in 2010. While all segments will enjoy an uptick in the low-single digits, cinema and online will enjoy double-digit growth. Auto advertising in cinema will grow 18 percent to $77.3 million, while online advertising will grow 11.4 percent to $4.3 billion, according to the forecast. Online is becoming a much more important media channel for auto advertising, accounting for 5.2 percent of all ad dollars spent in 2009. Automakers are shifting how they spend dollars online, decreasing dollars spent on display banners, popups and classified, and increasing dollars spent on e-mail and social-networking campaigns. The biggest growth area will be streaming audio and video. “The segment is positioning itself for ‘break-out’ growth in 2010,” the Borrell report said.
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GM rebound pivots on sales after Henderson cuts costs
General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson, buoyed by $50 billion in U.S. bankruptcy aid, slashed debt and operating costs without returning to profit. His challenge now is to sell more cars, Bloomberg News reports. A 28 percent drop in GM’s U.S. deliveries overwhelmed benefits from lower expenses in the third quarter, tempering the automaker’s announcement that it plans an early start on repaying its government borrowing. Even as GM generated $3.3 billion in cash, it posted a $1.15 billion loss. GM’s release of its first financial data since leaving Chapter 11 in July underscored the hurdles Henderson must clear to complete a turnaround. October’s increase in U.S. sales was its first since January 2008, and the biggest domestic automaker hasn’t posted back-to-back monthly gains since 2007.
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Social sites less friendly to video ads
Digital media buyers may want to think twice about where they place online video ads -- as social networking and gaming sites don't measure up to content sites and e-mail when it comes to user engagement, AdWeek reports.That's according to a wide-ranging report produced by third-party ad server Eyeblaster, which examined data from thousands of campaigns it executed for brands over the past year encompassing billions of impressions. Specifically, the report focused on two metrics deemed key by Eyeblaster analysts: Dwell Rate, which measures the proportion of ad impressions resulting in users engaging with an ad, such as mousing over or clicking on them, and Dwell Time, which measures the amount of time users spend engaged with a particular ad. Eyeblaster found that overall online video boosts both Dwell Rate and Dwell Time when compared to other forms of online advertising. However, online video tends to perform better when adjacent to content or e-mail than in social media and gaming environments -- both areas that have enjoyed major spikes in usage over the past five years, resulting in increased interest from advertisers.
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Hyundai nabs 5 Super Bowl slots; CBS sells 80% of Big Game
As auto advertising begins to improve after a year of decimation - total auto advertising across all media segments will increase 4.1% next year, according to Borrell Associates - Hyundai is ramping up for its biggest U.S. campaign ever, mediabuyerplanner.com reports. Hyundai’s campaign, for the redesigned Sonata and for the Tucson, will include five spots during the February, 2010, CBS airing of the Super Bowl - two during the game itself and three during pre-game. It will also include ads during the Academy Awards, according to MediaPost. “We loved what we got from last year’s Super Bowl numbers - they were off the charts,” says Joel Ewanick, Hyundai Motor America’s vp of marketing. The campaign will highlight its corporate social responsibility actions such as Hope on Wheels, a pediatric cancer program initiative driven by dealers. Cars.com is another in the auto segment which recently re-upped its Super Bowl appearance. Cars.com will return for the third year in a row, the company said.
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BMW signed as 2012 Olympic Games sponsor
BMW has signed up to be the 24th sponsor of the London 2012 Games, Marketing Week reports. The car maker will be the tier one automotive sponsor of the Games after agreeing a deal with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. BMW will provide a fleet of 4,000 cars, while BMW bicycles and motorcycles will be used by athletes and officials at the 2012 Games. The car maker will also become the Games’ sixth sustainability partner. BMW is the seventh top tier sponsor to have signed up; others include British Airways, British Telecom and Lloyds TSB. Tier two sponsors include Adecco, Cadbury, Cisco, Deloitte and UPS.
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Southern dealer featured in November issue of Dealer magazine
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FaceTime Strategy expands Automotive team in Chicago
FaceTime Strategy announced the expansion of their Chicago team with the hire of Carlo Sotelo as an Account Executive. Sotelo brings six years of agency experience with a successful track record of working with automotive dealers in increasing sales, the company said. He also will be working to secure new accounts in the automotive industry and helping those clients increase their bottom line.
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TK Carsites names J.D. Rucker Chief Marketing Officer
TK Carsites announced the appointment of James "JD" Rucker to Chief Marketing Officer. In this new position Rucker will merge dealer client marketing with TK Carsites' own marketing efforts under a new "results-based" marketing initiative, the company said. His goal will be to focus on the marketing efforts of their dealers first and utilize their successes to power TK's marketing campaigns.
[FULL STORY]
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Sales strategies
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How to keep your salespeople focused
by Jack Bennett
Stop .jpg?i=111809121907) me if you’ve heard this one.A dad, a mom and a daughter walk into a dealership...I know, I know this is a picture we all love to see, especially if the car is for the daughter. Jackpot! But my story this month is about a lot more than that up and what to do with it. It’s about how we feel about it. Actually it’s about how we feel about everything, the up, the car, the dealership, our boss, my wife, and even how my mother didn’t love me enough. But that is a story for another therapy session.We’ve all heard and have theories about what motivates people to buy, haven’t we? Studies on what causes them to make a decision on which salesperson, dealership, car, the list goes on and on. The one that sticks in my mind is one of the first I learned coming into this business. My boss said, “Jack,” (because that’s my name) “Jack, people buy cars 90 percent on emotion and 10 percent on logic. Because there is no logical reason why a person would trade in a three-year-old car with 30,000 miles on it, is there? Nope, they trade it in because they want a new car.” That made sense to me and over the years so I started to look at other numbers that get bantered about in survey after survey. What I came up with was my infamous, “Rules of 90-10!” If I’m remembered for nothing else when I kick the bucket, I hope to be remembered for those. Read more
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ARCHIVE
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Issue 14
November 11, 2009
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October 28, 2009
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October 21, 2009
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October 7, 2009
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Issue 8
September 30, 2009
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September 23, 2009
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September 16, 2009
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September 9, 2009
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September 2, 2009
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Issue 3
August 26, 2009
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August 19, 2009
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Issue 1
August 12, 2009
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Issue 52
August 5, 2009
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Issue 51
July 29, 2009
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Issue 50
July 22, 2009
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Issue 49
July 15, 2009
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Issue 48
July 8, 2009
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Issue 47
July 1, 2009
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Read how Dennis Higginbotham built a profitable business by shunning debt and acquiring underperforming stores 