For those of you that missed the action over the holiday, GMAC--GM's formerly wholly owned lending arm--received a financial infusion from the Fed that led them to offer zero percent loans on new car sales. You can rea more at David Welch's write up from New Year's Eve: http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2008/12/gmac_gets_a_gov.html
As everyone expects industry sales figures today from December to show more more serious sales declines, the effect of this should be allow more consumers to loan money for cars. The lack of credit in recent months has been a very serious problems for dealers and automakers; this should help remove at least one roadblock on the auto recovery highway.
Showing posts with label Business Week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business Week. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2009
Monday, October 13, 2008
A Tale of Two Launches
My colleagues and I at work have been arguing for a few years that the days of the big, splashy, event-driven new car launches should probably be relegated to the dustbin of auto PR practice.
For decades, automakers have flown cadres of journalists to expensive locales replete with ribbons of billard-ball smooth road surfaces (southern Spain seems to destination favorite). The reason we think this model is dying is fairly simple: the number of impressions (# of stories written x the number of times those stories are read/seen) doesn’t justify the huge cost, nor is there any tremendous body of evidence that proves that the kind of coverage you earn is much better.
What matters most these days, not shockingly, is the product.
There was a time when marketers could hope to wine and dine journalists into good reviews by appealing to their wanderlust/go-somewhere-warm self-interest , but with the internet trading on its ability to speak truth to power, journalists have an even greater incentive to be very forthcoming and candid about their impressions on new cars. For the most part, they are pretty fair.
In other support for our thesis, Dave Kiley at BusinessWeek weighs in on two recent launches, and gives another reason to keep it local:
"When Ford introduces an all-new F-Series pickup truck to media this month, it is holding the event at a local hotel and its own Romeo, MI proving ground. That may not sound like a big deal. But when Ford launched the Edge SUV in 2007, it flew reporters from all over the country to San Francisco. Mind you…I like this idea, as I often find it a pain in the neck to arrange to go to the West coast just to hear speeches and drive cars that I could drive just as well in Michigan."
His entire post can be read here.
For decades, automakers have flown cadres of journalists to expensive locales replete with ribbons of billard-ball smooth road surfaces (southern Spain seems to destination favorite). The reason we think this model is dying is fairly simple: the number of impressions (# of stories written x the number of times those stories are read/seen) doesn’t justify the huge cost, nor is there any tremendous body of evidence that proves that the kind of coverage you earn is much better.
What matters most these days, not shockingly, is the product.
There was a time when marketers could hope to wine and dine journalists into good reviews by appealing to their wanderlust/go-somewhere-warm self-interest , but with the internet trading on its ability to speak truth to power, journalists have an even greater incentive to be very forthcoming and candid about their impressions on new cars. For the most part, they are pretty fair.
In other support for our thesis, Dave Kiley at BusinessWeek weighs in on two recent launches, and gives another reason to keep it local:
"When Ford introduces an all-new F-Series pickup truck to media this month, it is holding the event at a local hotel and its own Romeo, MI proving ground. That may not sound like a big deal. But when Ford launched the Edge SUV in 2007, it flew reporters from all over the country to San Francisco. Mind you…I like this idea, as I often find it a pain in the neck to arrange to go to the West coast just to hear speeches and drive cars that I could drive just as well in Michigan."
His entire post can be read here.
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