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News and Industry Features
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GM scores October sales gains
Finally, some good news for General Motors, Business Week reports. The struggling auto giant is grabbing back some market share, a very early sign that GM may be able to slow its four-decade slide. Edmunds.com says GM's U.S. market share is 22.4% so far this month, which is a bump above the 19.6% GM has posted so far in 2009. The company's market share also topped 20% in September, thanks to some new models and—at long last—a boost in advertising. "The ad campaigns are starting to click," said Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore. "The 60-day money-back guarantee has spiked interest. It has moved GM's products up the shopping list." If GM can keep it up, the company can buy Chief Executive Officer Frederick A. "Fritz" Henderson some breathing room. Chairman Ed Whitacre, who was placed atop GM by the U.S. Treasury Dept. in June, has said to employees and dealers in recent months that if GM's management couldn't bring growth to the company, the new board of directors would find someone who would. Henderson said in a September interview that Whitacre wants to see traction.
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Move Ahead of your Competitors with Content Based SEO Strategies
By leveraging free and low-cost web publishing platforms, dealers can target any search phrases with effective content-based SEO strategies for Google page one dominance
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Getting to the Inbox is No Longer Enough
What’s hot in e-mail marketing now
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Is brand romance gone for car buyers?
To sell a car in the 1980s, dealers had to do little more than open their doors, and loyal buyers would show up to trade in their Chevrolet for a new Chevrolet, or their Toyota for another Toyota, The New York Times reports. Nearly four in five Americans were repeat buyers back then, staunchly faithful to brands that they knew, trusted and were part of their self-image. The allegiance often continued through generations of families, like party affiliations in politics. Now, partly as a result of increasingly fickle consumer tastes and the industry turmoil in Detroit, that hard-won loyalty is largely gone. So far this year, only about 20 percent of car shoppers stayed with the same brand when they purchased a new vehicle, according to a study by the Oregon-based firm CNW Marketing Research. As a result, the industry is seeing the kind of churn it hasn’t witnessed since Japanese manufacturers began making inroads in the American market more than 30 years ago. “The days when people bought a Toyota car or a General Motors product for 25 years are over,” said Art Spinella, CNW’s president. “There really isn’t any brand loyalty any more.”
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Hyundai: The newest U.S. auto power
In a year of unprecedented turmoil for the U.S. auto industry, one major car maker has emerged as a winner.  And that company isn't based in Detroit, Japan or Europe. South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group has gained significant ground against its more established rivals this year. In fact, the company, which has separate operations for its Hyundai and Kia brands in the U.S., is the only one to report sales growth this year, CNNMoney reports. U.S. sales for General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler Group, as well as Japan's Toyota Motor , Honda Motor and Nissan, are all down between 25% to 50% from a year ago. But combined U.S. sales for the Hyundai and Kia brands are up 2.6%. As a result, the two brands have picked up 2.2 percentage points of market share during the first nine months of 2009. Hyundai and Kia now combine for 7.4% of the U.S. auto market. That puts Hyundai Motor Group just ahead of Nissan as the sixth-largest automaker in terms of U.S. auto sales. And the Korean automaker is rapidly closing in on Chrysler, which now has just a 9.2% share of the U.S. market. Photo: The new Hyundai Genesis. Courtesy: Hyundai Kia Automotive Group
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The synergy of search and social media
Research has shown that display ad exposure can lift consumer response to paid search. Data from comScore, GroupM and M80 indicates searchers are also more likely to keep a brand in mind if they have seen a combination of paid search ads and social media., eMarketer reports this week. The research firms found a 19-percentage-point lift in searches on the campaign brand among users who saw social media relevant to the brand in addition to the campaign’s paid search ads compared with those who were exposed only to the search placements. And there was a further 13-point lift among those exposed to social media influenced directly by the brand.
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GM: 15 vehicles returned under money-back program
Just a tiny fraction of General Motors customers have returned their cars for refunds under the automaker's heavily advertised money-back guarantee program — and most buyers aren't even choosing to participate in the plan, opting for a rebate instead, The Associated Press reports. About 400 vehicle buyers, or "less than 1 percent" of sales since the program launched, have signed up for GM's 60-day money-back guarantee program, spokesman Tom Henderson said Tuesday. The rest took a $500 rebate, he said. Of those 400 vehicles, just 15 have been returned in the four days since customers could begin doing so, Henderson said. GM launched the money-back guarantee program on Sept. 14 with an advertising blitz, including TV spots starring GM Chairman Ed Whitacre, in a bid to get on-the-fence vehicle buyers to consider GM products after its stint in bankruptcy court this summer. The program runs through Nov. 30 and allows customers to return any new 2009 and 2010 Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC or Buick vehicle for a refund of the purchase price and sales tax if they are unsatisfied with their vehicle.
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Newspapers get some relief from GM, Mercedes-Benz ads
The Los Angeles Times pulled its “Chevy Showroom” Sunday insert backed by General Motors Corp. last year as car sales plummeted. GM has since emerged from bankruptcy protection and the newspaper section is back, Bloomberg News reports. The Times’ publisher, Tribune Co., along with New York Times Co. and Hearst Corp., say marketing spending rebounded from carmakers such as GM and Daimler AG in the third quarter. That may have helped stanch advertising sales declines after record drops in the first half of 2009. “We definitely saw a relative uptick in the performance of the automotive category in the last couple of months,” Denise Warren, chief advertising officer at the New York Times, said in an interview this month. “It’s been a little ray of sunshine.” Ad sales at U.S. newspaper publishers probably fell 23 percent in the third quarter to $6.85 billion, easing from declines of 29 percent and 28 percent in the second and first quarters, according to research firm Magna Global. Carmakers’ national campaigns may have mitigated a drop-off from larger ad categories that might not return to previous highs, said John Janedis, a New York-based analyst with Wells Fargo & Co.
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Inside the Chrysler, GM rescues
The White House auto task force, "shocked" by the depth of the financial problems at General Motors and Chrysler, very nearly let Chrysler go under before President Barack Obama decided the economy couldn't afford to lose another 300,000 jobs, The Detroit News reports. In a News interview and a first-person account published today in Fortune magazine, Obama's former top auto adviser, Steven Rattner, details his five months overseeing the automakers' bankruptcies and the decision to extend them a $62 billion federal bailout. Rattner paints a picture of "stunningly poor management" at both companies, saying in his Fortune piece that they were "in a state of denial."
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Cablevision pushes interactive ads
Cablevision Systems Corp. ad sales team will be busy this week, showing off a suite of interactive ad units that it hopes will help to keep local ad sales buoyant despite the down economy, Contentinople, a digital media industry publication, reports. Cablevision employees will be meeting with 85 media buyers over the next three days to demo interactive ad capabilities, including its newest ad unit, called "Optimum Select." The Optimum Select interactive ad unit allows brands to market their products direct to consumers with a call to action overlay that opens up to enable free offers or discounts sent to a subscriber's home address. It's still early days for Optimum Select, which launched earlier this month with a campaign from Gillette. That campaign began on October 5 and issued free samples of Gillette body wash to the first 30,000 subscribers that opted in. But the program finished early, as the free samples were all distributed in just over half the time planned. Cablevision has also signed up Benjamin Moore, New York-based retailer Century 21, and Unilever as early adopters of the Optimum Select ad unit. In addition to Optimum Select, Cablevision will be showing off telescoping overlays that run against 30-second ads, addressable ads, and same-day video-on-demand (VoD) ad insertion.
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Ford looking for a few good 2010 Fusion owners
Ford Motor Company said this morning that it is conducting a nationwide search for passionate 2010 Fusion and Fusion Hybrid owners to participate in Fusion 41, a consumer program designed to build excitement around the new 2010 Ford Fusion.
[FULL STORY]
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Stop Chasing Shiny Objects
How to get ahead and stay ahead by changing the way you manage everything about your Internet marketing
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Selection, Hiring, Orientation, and Training
Giving new hires a S.H.O.T. to be successful in the Internet department
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In Dealer magazine
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Cash for clunkers... The aftermath
by Jack Bennett
 Hello again, my name is Jack “Nostradamus” Bennett. That’s right. I can see the future. I have predicted many, many things. Some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t. Alright, most of them you never heard of but what I want to talk about is the one you have heard. That is if you’ve been following my columns over the years. My prediction? “This too shall pass.” Yes, I wrote that last year when everyone was running for cover, screaming into their pillows and for the truly desperate, quitting the business! Believe it. There are some people who left the car business by choice fearing there was no future. Well, we will have the last laugh because as I said, this is the car business. We’re not some corner Ma and Pa hardware store, fast food restaurant or bar. We are the cornerstone of the country; and in my estimation, the world. As the car business goes, so goes the economy. The problem I have is writing this article nearly two months ahead of time, some of what I know now may be different by the time you read it. At the time of this writing the CARS or “Cash for Clunkers” program is in full swing and is a huge success. Your showrooms are full, you’re selling cars and the government has even allocated more money. But I will add that it’s almost too successful. With more money thrown at us, there aren’t a lot of cars left. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this that will have been rectified. But as I said, because we are another month into the program as you read this, I can’t comment. What I can do is tell that whether it was the CARS Program, or some other thing that came up, we have persevered. Because I told you we would. Because, we have too! There is no alternative for us. As the car business goes, the economy goes and as that goes, the world goes. Okay, I am repeating myself but it is that important. Read more
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ARCHIVE
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Issue 10
October 14, 2009
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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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Issue 4
September 2, 2009
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Issue 3
August 26, 2009
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August 19, 2009
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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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Issue 46
June 24, 2009
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Issue 45
June 17, 2009
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Issue 44
June 10, 2009
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Issue 43
June 3, 2009
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