Ford Puts more spending online

Ford Motor Company's Mercury division is kicking off a multi-year campaign in which 25 percent of spending will go to digital and experiential marketing -- with the bulk going online.
The "New Doors Opened" campaign, for which spending was not disclosed, is designed to support the launch of six Mercury products over four years. New models include the Mercury Mariner, a compact sport utility vehicle, which will debut next month, and the Mercury Montego, a new mid-size sedan.
"A strategic decision was made to employ the Internet in a way like we have never done before," said John Fitzpatrick, Lincoln Mercury general marketing manager. "For this campaign, we are dedicating nearly 25 percent of our total marketing communications budget to digital and consumer relationship events, which represents a substantial commitment when compared to prior launches."
The company wouldn't break out exactly how much would be spent online versus on experiential marketing efforts, but one executive estimated that about 16 percent of spend would go online. That's compared to between 3 and 6 percent of spending that has occurred online in previous campaigns, company officials said.
Because Mercury has long been thought of as a stodgy brand for older drivers, the new campaign is aimed at changing that image and attracting younger consumers.
"We're trying to attract a new and different type of customer to the brand," explains Linda Perry-Lube, e-business and CRM manager for Lincoln Mercury. "To build this new brand awareness, we needed to do it in new ways, not in traditional ways. Not just in the automotive space, either."
Offline, a major component of the campaign will be an original song, "It's My Life," composed and sung by Grammy winning artist Paula Cole and produced by Grammy winner Don Was. Cole is best known for singles like "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?" and "I Don't Want to Wait," which was also used as the theme to "Dawson's Creek." Thirty-second television spots will use several different versions of the song. The company will also leverage that song online by making an MP3 version of it available on its Web site.
"Right now, that will be the way to get [the song]," said Sara Tatchio, a spokesperson for Lincoln Mercury. "It is a song not written to be a car song, but to be a song that conveys our feeling and our messaging."
Online, the "New Doors Opened" effort will revolve around a redesign for the Mercury brand's site to be launched in October. The site, which the company describes as "magazine-like" in appearance, will feature video, computer graphics, and a lot of Flash. Many of the site's video elements will tell stories and link back to the television spots.
"It will be far more photography-intensive than you would normally have, and the images will be used in a non-traditional way," said Perry-Lube. "We really kind of wanted to break out of the typical paradigm of what the automotive Web site looks like. They are, in our opinion, getting kind of commoditized and starting to all look alike."
Online advertising will begin to appear on September 13 in conjunction with a teaser brand campaign in print and on TV. Ads will appear on lifestyle-oriented Web sites like epicurious.com, foodnetwork.com, Yahoo!, MSN, weather.com and others.
Media buys for the new Mariner will skew slightly female, said Perry-Lube, with more of a focus on lifestyle-oriented Web sites. For the Montego, Mercury will employ more male-focused sites like Fortune.com or Forbes.com.

More on Chrysler - Minivan Sumer Games

Chrysler adds some zaniness to launches; word-of-mouth marketing pays off
By JASON STEIN Automotive News
DETROIT -- Jason Vines had been the Chrysler group's vice president of communications for barely two weeks when Chrysler group CEO Dieter Zetsche approached him at the Detroit auto show in January.
A news conference about the redesigned 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan had just ended. Zetsche sought a way to prolong the buzz about the minivan after its launch.
Vines' brainstorm, the Minivan Summer Games, produced the word-of-mouth marketing the Chrysler group wanted.
The Chrysler group's public relations arm increasingly is helping its marketing department to sustain public attention to the group's vehicles once they are launched. Many of its ideas are unconventional and cross the traditional lines of PR and marketing duties.
"Both departments working well together has not always been the case, here or in the industry," Vines says. "Oftentimes there was a lot of petty jealousy among too many organizations, and that's really stupid.
"We can make our marketing dollars go further" through cooperation between departments, Vines adds.
With the Minivan Summer Games, Vines' public relations team came up with a national event that showcased Chrysler and Dodge minivans. The games, which began June 13 nationwide and ended Saturday, July 31, in New York, played off this month's Summer Olympics in Athens.
The games tested the speed, coordination and teamwork of contenders in a series of events. The events included loading and unloading a minivan, operating the vans' Stow 'n Go seating and storage system, finding cupholders in the vehicles and identifying other van features.
More than 5,000 people registered online to compete for 400 positions in the games. The Chrysler group staged the events in eight communities: Boston; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Detroit; Houston; Milwaukee; Raleigh, N.C.; Gilroy, Calif.; and Virginia Beach, Va.
First-place finishers won a family vacation anywhere in the world and a 2005 Chrysler Town & Country. Second-place prizes included a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan and a family vacation anywhere in the United States. The bronze medal winner got a two-year lease on a Grand Caravan.
Events such as the Minivan Games need not cost "a ton of money," Vines says."Some are thousands (of dollars) and some are seven figures," he says. "But when you look at our reach to consumers, it's pennies on the dollar compared to traditional marketing."
In June the Chrysler group sponsored a "Bury the Competition" contest in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Contest winners got the opportunity to bury their non-Chrysler group vehicles in their front yards - temporarily - in exchange for a 2005 Dodge Magnum RT.
One of the Chrysler group's PR partners proposed the idea. Brainstorming by the automakers' communications department refined it.
Entrants had to write an essay explaining why they should win the chance to bury their vehicle. More than 350 contestants responded. The Chrysler group named two winners, one from each city.
The idea of the contest and minivan games, Vines says, is to address product features in a whimsical fashion.
"It's consistency of message," Vines says. "After we do our standard launches, it's a question of how we can keep the excitement using nontraditional means."
He adds: "In the past, those were only marketing programs. The key for us now is putting marketing with PR. And you'll see more and more of that. We're looking at it every day."

Advergaming lifts Daimler Chrysler Awareness

Last week, Jeff Bell, VP of marketing for Chrysler/Jeep, demonstrated the positive effect of custom advergaming initiatives on Chrysler brand awareness during his keynote address at the Jupiter Media Advertising Forum in New York City. In fact, Bell revealed that in some instances, demonstrated interest led to actual sales.
One of the games--called "Race The Pros"--generated a 27.6 percent lift in Dodge brand awareness, as well as a 19.6 percent purchase intent and a 24.7 percent rise in overall brand awareness for DaimlerChrysler brands among users who played and downloaded the game. It was promoted online at MSN and FoxSports.com, as well as during certain Fox broadcasts on TV. WildTangent, which created the game, has built several other games for blue chip companies, and is currently working on Nike's Speed campaign.
"Our fastest-growing area by far is in the Internet," said Chrysler's Bell. "The great thing about the Web is you can take a risk, learn from it quickly, and move on." He added that the positive results from the gaming initiatives will result in more online spending from the automaker.
In his keynote address, Bell noted that "the future is such that all marketing will be interactive," and "integrating your brand into popular culture is absolutely vital." He added that Chrysler plans to begin marketing on the Internet outside of the auto category--to sports and tech sites, for example. DaimlerChrysler's other advergame initiatives include "Chrysler Golf" and "Jeep 4x4 Trail of Life." "Chrysler Golf" drew 124,732 registrants; each was required to give geographic as well as car preference information prior to playing. Bell said the result was a 33 percent lift in purchasing intent over the next six months.
The "Jeep 4x4 Trail of Life" game drew an even larger audience of 383,403 participants. Thirty-nine percent of those who played expressed interest in purchasing a Jeep vehicle. Bell said that Jeep sold more than 1,000 vehicles to people who had registered for the game in the last 18 months.
In his address, Bell noted the importance of being able to experience a brand's product--particularly in an industry such as automotive--and emphasized that advergaming provides consumers with a valuable combination of technology, popular culture, and brand interaction.

Bountiful Mazda


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 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.
Tim Manners, editor, Reveries (Cool News, via Lynette)