Ipod Your BMW - Does what it says on the tin...

Car companies using Viral as a standard marketing technique

Will there be a backlash..?

Uh oh. Automakers have gotten the viral bug. Viral marketing, meet Detroit creative sensibilities. AutoWeek covered the now widespread phenomemon of carmakers trying to get free exposure by deliberately leaking out sometimes controversial spots, parodies and mockumentaries. It's becoming institutionalized, with agencies like Ground Zero producing planned efforts for clients like Toyota. But as soon as an agency develops a creative brief for a viral campaign, the whole effort gets thrown into a decidedly non-spontaneous tilt, which can be dangerous to viral efforts that count on a certain subversive charge to power its spread.

Mazda puts terminals in car dealerships

Mazda's Cartailing. Mazda is the first car marketer "to figure out how to make money from the industry's chief enemy of healthy margins: the Web-smart, pitch-proof car buyer," according to a Business 2.0 article by Bob Parks. That about 60 percent of car buyers "bargain-hunt before visiting the lot" is a fact well known -- and feared -- by car dealers. Not Mazda's new breed of dealers, though. They have turned that nettlesome shift in consumer behavior to their advantage by embracing it. Go to one of Mazda's new dealerships (there are six of them so far) and you are all but encouraged to step right up to a kiosk to research sticker prices.

The idea is this: Neutralize the price issue and win the customer's trust. But wait -- this is a car dealership -- so of course there's more: Once the customer's trust is won, "upsell, cross-sell and accessorize." Michael McDonald, owner of Bountiful Mazda, www.BountifulMazda.com, in Bountiful, Utah, says the approach has resulted in a "57 percent rise in sales for the first quarter of 2004. "Once the customer's guard is down," he says, "you can find out they can afford more car." Ah, some things just never change, right?

If the kiosks alone aren't enough to make the sale, the new Mazda dealerships stir in an expeditious test-drive. Like the kiosks, the test drives move the shopper off the price issue. "It helps sell the product before you even talk about cost ... It used to be the other way around," notes Mazda coo John Mendel. Sealing the deal, perhaps, are the 400-square foot cafes built right into the center of these newfangled showrooms. Ostensibly, the cafes are a no-sell zone (salesmen aren't allowed, unless invited in by a customer). But the cafes also surround visitors with Mazda's latest models, big-screen plasma televisions, and give customers one more reason to hang around. The showroom overhauls don't come cheap, though -- they cost dealers $810K apiece (Mazda kicks in $300K). Mazda says it plans to revamp all 200 of its dealerships by 2008.