Mourning REM

When I was 13 years old I got a CD player for Christmas.  I had two CDs: Divine Madness by Madness and Live Alive Quo by Status Quo.  Despite having always adored music, it became quickly clear to me that I had a fairly poor collection.  To quote Father Ted, “Dougal, what you have is a record, to have a collection you need more than one record”.  With this, I took my paper round money and selected the free 5 CDs I could get by subscribing to the Britannia Music Club.  The albums I can remember getting (can’t remember all 5) were the Wayne’s World Soundtrack, Diva by Annie Lennox and Automatic for the People by REM.

Looking back at how random the choices were, I am eternally thankful to fate for selecting the final album which is a masterpiece.  I didn’t take to the album quickly, but the band would become one of the most important in my music collection over the coming years.  In fact, I don’t think I really listened to the album much until a friend at school mentioned that he loved Everybody Hurts.

Gradually the album became a fixed resident of my CD player.  I used to always listen to my CDs on random, and the player always selected track 10 first.  Track 10 on Automatic is Man on the Moon and a great introduction to REM.  Today I don’t really like it, perhaps due to overexposure, but it was the starter drug that made me appreciate the rest of the album.

Most importantly for me, I met Marcus who would soon become one of my best and closest friends who had fallen for REM quicker than I.  His excitement made me listen to the album more, and I soon listened to the album differently, understanding the contrasting powers of Find the River and Monty Got a Raw Deal. 

It will be one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t join Marcus in purchasing tickets to see them at the Milton Keynes Bowl (the tickets having been rescheduled for Bill Berry’s aneurysm).  Instead, I can remember taping the concert as it was broadcast on Radio 1.  It is one of the few tapes I still own.

The album that inspired the tour, Monster, for me was an incredible awakening.  The band admitted that the previous album nearly broke the band, and that they were rarely in the same room for the recording.  When I heard Monster, I immediately picked up on these flaws.  The D chord at the start of What’s The Frequency Kenneth, was so simple and yet raw and dirty that I struggle to play an open D on an electric guitar knowing that it will forever be inferior.  This is irritating as D is quite useful.

I think what Marcus and I both liked about Monster was that other people didn’t like it.  They wanted the, admittedly beautiful, sweeping strings of Automatic, but here was Monster which was challenging and loud and different.  We loved it.  It was this album that made me discover the back catalogue and make me realise that REM were meant to be a band who played things fast – Michael Stipe admitting that his style of singing is designed to try and encourage the band to slow down.  The one song where he goes with the flow, It’s The End of the World (and I feel Fine), is a breathless vocal feat.  I will forever remember Marcus reciting the lyrics at breakneck speed when drunk (I dare you to challenge him).

I finally got to see REM live at Glastonbury in 1999.  This is the subject of a whole different blog, Marcus and I didn’t get drunk (I don’t think we even had a beer, it was too expensive), we didn’t stay up late, we were there for the music … and primarily to see REM.  I was blown away.  The band’s sound was unlike anything else I had heard, designed for the open air.  The change in pace between songs perfect.  Here was, the frankly strange and socially awkward, Michael Stipe emitting a charisma that was enchanting.  There may have been c80,000 people in the field, but I can only remember Marcus, me and REM. 

So now the band have broken up, and there is the age old debate of whether they should have called time earlier.  My view is that they shouldn’t have and I wish that they had continued.

Their newer albums weren’t as complete, they never would be, bands have their creative peaks when younger and hungrier.  However, they still produced great songs (Imitation of Life, At Your Most Beautiful, Leave, All the Way to Reno, Leaving New York just a selection) and, importantly, were still phenomenal live. 

Marcus and I saw REM at Twickenham in 2008 after releasing an “ok’ish” album in Acclerate, but live they were incredible and innovative and brave enough to play early tracks that most in the audience didn’t recognise.  Their use of lighting and cameras brought the most out of the screens.  Only U2 are comparable for staging such a show.  The energy of their live performance relentless, the band seemed to get faster throughout, taking a break only for poignant ballads which soured through the sky.

Without REM, my musical tastes may have never strayed from the mainstream albums that Britannia used to recommend.  But instead, I embraced alternative music, and what’s more gained the belief that I could understand it.  Whereas U2 made me discover musical roots, REM taught me appreciate new music. 

There is one main reason why I’ll miss REM; I will never get to stand shoulder to shoulder with Marcus at one of their concerts.  There we would be getting overexcited by random early REM songs, shouting the lyrics out word perfect whilst laughing at the weird looks we get from people around us waiting for something they recognise from Heart FM.  There are other bands and Marcus is still healthy, but I am sad that I won’t get to do this again.  If Michael, Mike, Peter (and hopefully even Bill) have a heart they will put on a show just so that Marcus and I can relive this again.  I’m sure it was the “right time” etc, but it is another sign of my youth coming to an end.

I know they may not be everyone’s favourite band, and I’m certainly not unconditional in my love of their songs.  But, they introduced me to the concept of challenging music and one that united two friends.   I’m eternally grateful to the band, but could they come and say goodbye properly?  Please?

Into The Sun

Using the blog as my scrapbook, here's my first ever appearance in The Sun.  Helpfully it came with a promotion ...

Link viewable here:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/money/3848177/A-GENERATION-of-youngsters-are-being-priced-out-of-driving-by-fuel-and-insurance-costs.html

Traveling Betjeman

I'm halfway through a long train journey to Hull.  Stopping at Sheffield station I felt a bit Betjeman and impressed by the railways, but somewhat confused by myself.

What can help overcome this than a bit of pretentiousness?  

Here's a few words I wrote whilst enjoying my bagel...

"Laptop open, tethered to the digital world,

The industrial breeze of the railway

Provides the fresh air of the day.

Suit, briefcase, Waitrose bag with his lunch,

An office with rolling views, albeit cramped,

Pauses at Sheffield awaiting the next leg.

Emails continue to flow but are disconnected,

from the station, drenched in sunshine,

populated by the masses to whom he tries to sell.

How much does he understand?

He’ll have to wait for the email to find out."

What’s it all for(square)?

I feel ashamed to say it, but I’m giving up on FourSquare.  I have used it relatively heavily in the last 6 months (within the confines of my simple life), and I’ve got to finally admit that I take almost no utility from it.

Why am I ashamed?  I like to think of myself as about a “level 3 or 4” (out of 5) in digital savvy’ ness, and FourSquare was something that people whose opinion I respected digitally understood and raved about.  To give up on it feels like an acceptance that I’m at best a 3 (possibly a 2!).

Before you condemn me please read my frustrations:

• 1)      I no longer live in a big city.  There is nothing cool about taking the mayorship of your local Argos as I began to obsess about
• 2)      My life is quite boring.  Reading through my check-ins reveals: home, offices, train stations.  There is only a light scattering of cool places I’ve been to, and this is tempered by the next point…
• 3)      Lack of 3G at the only cool places I go to.  I was at Old Trafford recently and I thought that would be a good check-in with plenty of points (see another frustration), but I subsequently spent most of the match trying to get internet connection.  Check-ins in London are also wildly unpredictable given the city’s appalling 3G coverage
• 4)      The usability is pretty dreadful.  The app regularly locks up and there are too many steps from completing a check-in to returning to your “home” screen.  The league table is unreliable and slow to load
• 5)      What do I get in return?  I’m aware that I’ve given some pretty personal info (including where and when I’m on holiday), and all I get are a few lousy points?  I’m competitive enough as it is, I don’t need the pain of getting addicted to something else (I got addicted)

That said, we have shared a few memorable moments, almost exclusively at train stations, when reading the “tips”.  At Peterborough station I was informed “don’t stop here, it’s shit” (useful advice) and, my favourite, discovering the Ken Dodd statue at Liverpool Lime St.

I’m probably not strong enough to give it up altogether (still paranoid I might be wrong), but I will no longer be able to endorse it.  FourSquare will recover, but will I?

Help – I think I’m bored of the internet…

A bit of a ranty one this, but over the past few weeks I’ve found myself increasingly unsatisfied with internet.  Part of this is due to my addiction to the net, checking Twitter, BBC Sport etc which compels me to look regularly and, unsurprisingly, quicker than juicy content can be uploaded.

A smaller case of this problem is exemplified by regular watching of Sky Sports News where you are sucked into reading the ticker at the bottom of the screen in the hope that something new (and possibly interesting) is updated.  The waiting is as addictive as the content itself (and subliminally learning top goal scorers in La Liga).

In a world of 24 hour news channels and constantly updated newspaper websites the reality is that the world simply isn’t that interesting.  Alternatively, we’re so numbed by the updates that it’s hard to appreciate the privilege we have access to.  But more than this, I think that the quality of the content on the net is frankly not that good (I appreciate the irony of this comment).

With the economics of online journalism being as they are, it is becoming increasingly rare to find good quality content.  I’m as big a fan of Mail Online as anyone, but there’s only so much cheese I can take before I feel bloated.  I’m overly reliant on The Guardian for essays, though crave an alternative voice which just isn’t provided in the same depth by other news sites.  I had big hopes for HuffingtonPost, but I find the site so busy and the articles so cut and pasted that it fails on the initial promise of providing an online soap box for high profile bloggers.

Perhaps the world of quality online writing is going the way of most blogs, we start with great intentions and then just lose interest. 

Ultimately (and slightly worried this puts me in the Murdoch camp) there surely needs to be a way of making the economics work so that good quality journalism can be paid for?  I just don’t think the right forum has been found yet.  Sites like SabotageTimes touch on it, but I’ve yet to see a great example of it yet.  When I work out the answer I may finally stop needing to watch Sky Sports News…

Dreamtival

It’s that time of year when I groan again at the hype that surrounds Glastonbury.  Rather than just direct abusive “hippie” type comments I thought I’d be proactive and think of what my dream festival would look like.  I’m sure you’ve had the debate in the pub, you’ve got to fill a festival line up.  You are entitled to creative freedom around the era the band appears from, but you are constrained by ensuring the appropriate time slot for the band (eg can’t have supergroups performing throughout the day).

Unsurprisingly, I’m naturally sceptical of music festivals.  In all honesty, I prefer a gig as I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of people drifting in and out of different artists.  Our approach to bands when we were growing up was to completely obsess about them and learn every lyric (and guitar solo) and queue up ridiculously early in the chance of catching a glimpse of a roadie or even a band member.  Utterly sad, but the inclination remains.  As such, I will stop short of my many requirements for the festival itself in terms of types of people (like me but not too much like me), facilities (loos you can safely p** in), dress code (no stone dyed clothes) etc.  However, I will make it categorically clear that any flags in the audience will not be tolerated.

Right, the music.   Rather than breaking out across different stages, I want to see all of the acts, so I only have one stage.  I also only have 2 days (Friday and Saturday) as I think Sunday is too much and would rather focus on getting on the road.  Likewise, there is no turnaround time, it is constant music.

Friday (start slowly…)

Time	Act	Reason
Midday to 1pm	James Taylor (early 70s)	At the very start of his career, a beautiful introduction to the mix of folk and alternative.  Ease people into it
1pm to 2pm	Nick Drake	Might be a bit samey after James Taylor.  But to see a young Nick Drake would have been an utter privilege.  To lay on the grass listening to such melodies and tone would be immense
2pm to 3pm	Ben Folds Five (debut album era)	A bit more noise, but an exciting new artist (at this time) with some amazing piano skills
3pm to 4pm	Fleet Foxes	Continuing the days folk theme.  Geniuses of melody.  A great band to watch with a nice afternoon drink (pimms or shandy most likely)
4pm to 5pm	Flight of the Conchords	A good bit of comedy to lighten up the afternoon before everyone settles in.  Hilarious live.  An appropriate billing for New Zealand’s second favourite folk parody band
5pm to 6.30pm	Sufjan Stevens	Not sure how good he would be live, but I’m so intrigued and desperate to see.  Again, audience screening required to ensure that only people that “get it” are in attendance.  Likely an artist that people could spoil by talking through the performance
6.30pm to 8pm	Weezer (Pinkerton era)	Lots to sing along too and switching the audience onto some loud noises.  Amazing live, would have loved to seen them at an early stage of their career.  Choosing Pinkerton so that they have more than the Blue Album to play and fill the 90 minutes
8pm to 11.30pm	REM (Monster era)	I saw them at Glastonbury in 1999, but they were missing Bill Berry who last toured on the Monster/Aneurysm tour.  Proper stadium band at the height of their game and embracing electric guitars.  Michael Stipe incredible at controlling a large audience

Saturday (it’s allowed to get a little noisy)

Time	Act	Reason
Midday to 1pm	Noah and the Whale	Beautiful music, always.  Picture them playing to a crowd waking up and in full daylight.  Sweeping strings and great melodies.  A difficult slot, but a great set up for the day
1pm to 2pm	Oasis (Definitely Maybe pre-release)	Who are these upshots?!  Presumably they’ll mouth off about Noah and the Whale (I’ll have a word with them)
2pm to 3pm	Burt Bacharach (and guest artists)	A full orchestra for some classics with a few surprise appearances (I’ve been sworn to secrecy)
3pm to 4pm	James (Laid era)	Lots of dancing and a few sing-alongs for people
4pm to 5pm	Band of Horses	Big sounds and big guitars and a little bit country
5pm to 6.30pm	Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots era)	One of my favourite bands live, great energy and bound to bring a smile to everyone’s faces.  Lots of zorb action
6.30pm to 8pm	Smiths (Queen is Dead era)	Quickly restoring melancholy levels.  But what a band to see!
8pm to 11.30pm	Rolling Stones (Exile on Main St era)	I’m not 100% on this, but a band at the height of their creative powers, throwing out incredible songs that must have been electric when live.  Hopefully catch the band before they disappeared within Jagger’s ego

This line-up is only a snapshot in time, probably influenced by what I’ve listened to recently (currently listening to REM Monster and have been reading Keith Richards autobiography).  It will change before I get home, but something along these lines would satisfy me and encourage me to camp.

What would be great to add to this is some of these artists being unknown to me at the time I sit down to listen to them.  To discover some of these acts for the first time live would be a real privilege.  It is this that I am most jealous of all festival attendees – stumbling across a new band that just blows you away, the live performance will always enhance your memories particularly if you share it with great friends.

Although it is clear that I am way too anal to fully embrace it, I’m now jealous of the festival goers…

ps even reading this back makes me realise I’ve made a number of mistakes.  Perhaps I need a third day?  Arrrgghh!

The rationalist's dilema

In the last couple of weeks I have been converted to a world of imperfection.  Flatteringly considering myself an economist, I have an obsession with efficiency.  Anyone with an equilibrium named after them is a natural hero.

The revelation has come in the value of keeping things simple.  This principle has been reinforced to me in deal structuring and price setting.  Whilst I have never actively sought to overcomplicate things (some of my colleagues and professional acquaintances may disagree), I have simply focussed on making sure that things were structured in such a way to provide people with the correct incentives.

Consequently, when it comes to partnerships I have preferred tiered revenue targets with rising shares; corporate transactions earnouts with a mix of targets to manage behaviour; and even to pricing that truly reflects value delivered.

My hope has always been to create the right balance of incentives with protection for both sides.  Whilst simplicity would have always been an ideal, for me it now becomes as important as incentive and protection.  Would it even help to have a diagram? (it’s been a long train journey)

The reality being that these three items are not always consistent.  I would now push the importance of keeping things easy to understand, and importantly (in the corporate world) easy to communicate.  One of my failings would be that when in “deal mode”, I live the deal and iterations of the structure seem completely rational.  However, all parties need to share the same understanding of the deal, and this can be undermined if it has strayed from simplicity.

It is also difficult to resist the temptation to add complexity once parties have agreed buy-in on a simple basis.  One of the partners we are dealing with has a great ability to continually make things simpler and consequently the partnership will be stronger – we are both clear on each other’s roles in the relationship.

This did slightly jar with my pretence of being an economist until I remembered the theory of the second best.  I am bound to get it wrong (pretty sure I did in my finals), but I enjoyed the way it pulled at the core of pareto economics to say that by taking a wider view on things the right result might be in general more efficient than a series of individual efficient situations.  (I defer to Wikipedia)

I have seen the value of simplicity play out in a partnership we are exploring and also in investigating pricing options (through a fascinating focus group held expertly by Rafe Offer).  In both cases, the need to balance risks and incentives were fully understood, but instead of contracting for them, both our partner and dealers recognised that these could be solved in easier ways – simply by assessing whether it is working or not.  And the key to solving this is closer communication.  Incredibly simple, but allows us to reduce the need for contracts and focus on our relationships.

Oh crap – I’ve already over complicated it.  In my head it sounded simple…

The Ronseal School of Marketing

After much hot air on this blog, it was an incredibly proud moment when the staff at motors.co.uk gathered to watch our advert broadcast during Emmerdale.  I was incredibly nervous about its screening, still suspicious that we hadn’t booked the ad, or had missed a compliance requirement on its submission.

But it screened, and it looked beautiful.  As many of us have said during the creation “it looks like a proper advert”.  We now know it to be a real advert!

We have come an incredibly long way in a short period.  Stripping back our consumer messaging to its very core and also understanding exactly where our brand fits.  motors.co.uk has always focussed on trust and reassurance, and its partnership with newspaper groups has naturally targeted it at a certain audience.  However, we have moved from having a slightly circumstantial brand positioning to a very explicit view of who our audience is.

This will flow through the company to inform product design, tone of any messaging as well as providing the sales team with confidence to know the value and identity of our leads for dealers.  At its core we want to promote “smart, safe and easy car search”.  Additionally, we want people to engage with our brand around some of the emotions of car ownership and buying.  Not all car owners are experts on the specifications, but we all possess hundreds of memories and feelings about our car.

However, I get ahead of myself and make this sound all too fluffy.  I want to reassure you of how basic the first line of our brief was – “we want people to know what motors.co.uk does”.   Fortunately, the team at A&N Creative were able to nail this point quickly and grant us the luxury of thinking more about our brand messaging and positioning.  Thanks to their creative ideas and the research activity led by our head of research, Dermot Kelleher, we were able to be much smarter.

The result is a campaign that after almost 2 weeks on air has seen a significant increase in traffic, engagement and response.  People are also remembering the brand with 150%+ increase in direct and branded search traffic.  This has been an amazing response from a medium that is often pitched for medium-long term brand building.  There is still work to be done in understanding the data and being able to optimise future campaigns, but the initial signs are overwhelmingly positive.

The title of the blog isn’t as crazy as you think.  Production costs were tight and the deadlines even tighter.  The back-up plan was me addressing the camera, pleading with people to come to motors.co.uk.  Perhaps one day … but only if I move into mattress sales.

How accurate is Three Men and a Baby?

After a 5 (plus 9ish) month sentence, Bianca was finally treated to a night out.  Her prison officer Ted left with me and me alone.  Sure I’ve spent lots of time with Ted before, but usually I have had the emergency button of “the boob” if things got out of hand.

Ted slept on the way to drop Bianca off, probably a good thing as it struck her that she was going to be Ted’less for the next few hours.  I decided to kick off my good, responsible parenting immediately and drove home the long way to make sure that he slept for at least 30 minutes.

A weary Ted woke to finally realise that his mother wasn’t around.  There was a weird 10 minutes where Ted was still a little sleepy, a little confused and quiet as he wondered why a) his dad was around on a week day and b) his mummy hadn’t come back.

Ashamedly, I settled with him on my lap and had a quick glance at work emails until Ted wrestled the iPhone from me and into his mouth.  He was back in the room.  The giggles started and he recommenced his quest to steal my glasses.  Even as I type I struggle to see the screen through his grubby fingerprints over my specs.

The next 3 hours were brilliant.  We laughed.  He climbed me.  He dribbled on me (lots).  We played with his toys.  He even played exceptionally patiently whilst I tried to work the steriliser and make his bottle without burning myself.  I knew I’d taken too long and was feeling nervous when I heard a screech from the living room.  My senses went on high alert, was Ted beginning to feel abandoned?  Nope, he’d reached over, got a toy in his mouth and seemed to be laughing at Friends on the TV.  As I rushed in, he stopped, smiled at me and then turned back towards the TV.

I think this summarised the whole thing.  He absolutely bossed our afternoon together.  He held the bottle I tried to feed him with.  He reached for the toys he wanted to play with.  He threw himself backwards when he wanted to play “row row row your boat”.  And even rubbed his eyes 5 minutes before he was due his bath as if to say “I’m not sure you’re aware of the schedule, but I’d quite like my bath now”. 

The sad thing is that once asleep, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but do some work.  I keep looking at the monitor wondering if he’ll wake up wanting to play again.  (he did wake up and he just wanted milk – but only at an acceptable temperature, so I had to make a second bottle)   

I know that it would be incredibly difficult to do this all day every day as Bianca does so naturally (and excellently), but I felt privileged to have this special bit of father/son time.  I hope he enjoyed it and that he’ll let me have another go – frankly, it’s his decision.

Here's a pic of my boss, commanding from his high chair

*****

Incidentally – how weird is this?  I was trying to find the scene from 3 Men and a Baby where Tom Selleck stares blindly at the selection of nappies and formula in a supermarket, when I found this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF2f__k0Pnw

apparently a whole internet craze about a ghost boy in the film.  I am freaking out.

Economics of a Rate Freeze

Today motors.co.uk announced a freezing of our rates to automotive dealers.  The decision to announce comes on the back of feedback from the market about upward pressure on their media spend.  Obviously a lot of the spend is directed to one major provider, but there has been a trend in the market due to the increasing importance of the internet in generating response for dealers.

At motors.co.uk our aim is clear – to grow quickly to provide automotive dealers with a must-have source of media and to provide consumers with the best used car search experience.  However, our approach is to do it in a collaborative, transparent manner.  We believe that by increasing the confidence of both buyers and sellers we will make the market bigger.

The realities of business mean that whilst we have frozen rates, we believe there is a commercial value to the response we provide to dealers and that we should be recompensed for this.  To generate the response that we do, we have invested millions of pounds in marketing and will continue to spend heavily (as our latest TV campaign shows).  Although the internet lowers initial barriers to entry, it is expensive business building an online brand.

Whilst our rates have been frozen, our traffic and response continue to increase.  Consequently, we are becoming cheaper by the day on a cost-per-lead basis. 

We are lucky to have the backing of one of the UK’s largest media groups, Daily Mail and General Trust, who have a rich history of creating household media brands.  This has provided us with the confidence and resources to invest in marketing, technology and staff to ensure that motors.co.uk can handle fast growth and comfortably serve thousands of dealers.

The balance we have to find as a challenger online brand is to deliver clear value to our customers whilst ensuring we generate sufficient financial return to invest in marketing and technology and also generate a commercial return appropriate to the level of risk taken.  The internet has democratised some sectors but it has also over-rewarded established brands who can bypass the vagaries of search.  Although the current long-tail of poorly populated classified sites and aggregation engines may confuse the customer, I believe that consumers and dealers both deserve choice in classified advertising.  Obviously, I hope they then choose motors.co.uk!

Insight into the upcoming TV campaign

The upcoming TV campaign continues to keep us all busy, but also incredibly excited about the prospects.  The adrenaline is flowing at a rapid rate throughout the whole business as the campaign forces us to ensure everything is set for a successful campaign.


We made the decision to go on TV relatively late (in comparative terms), but this provided a sense of urgency which has fuelled our work habits and rate of change.  It is my hope that both dealers and consumers get to see this velocity and hunger to provide a leading site for used car search.


The campaign forced us to address a number of questions about the business, from the brand message, to the consumers that we are targeting and even whether our business cards are appropriate!  Through extensive research and some soul searching we made the decision to lead with a new creative campaign.  


This was a difficult decision as Sensei was the product of lots of hard work and research. However, we believe the market has changed and the key messages of motors.co.uk need to be kept simple, to provide clarity to consumers about what we do and why they should visit.  As a young business we need to change things!


We wholeheartedly believe that the market underserves the general car buyer.  We need to remember that buying a car is a big decision with a lot of pressures.  Furthermore, we discovered that consumers are excited and scared in unison.  The consumer often believes that they are being "ripped off" or paying over the odds.  I think that as an industry, we have a job to do to show that there isn't a hidden agenda and do whatever we can to breakdown the information asymmetry.  I am confident that motors.co.uk can address this gap and we will be working with dealers to improve public perception and increase the enjoyment of the car buying process.


So ... as a result of the TV campaign, the branding across motors.co.uk and its advertising will change.  We are incredibly impressed by the efforts of AN Creative  and think that the message will be clear and simple but also very charming.  The core values of motors.co.uk have not changed, but we believe we've found some effective tools for communicating this.  Our dealers can only benefit as this increases traffic to motors.co.uk.


I'll be sure to post more as we have it for distribution, but here is a teeny sneak preview...

Welcome to DK!

Just a quick one today, to welcome the excellent insight of Dermot Kelleher to the world of Blogging.

DK is the Head of Research at motors.co.uk and has his finger tips on the wealth of data that flows through our business.  Highly recommended following for anyone interested in trends in online used car advertising ... and occasionally some rambling adoration of Spurs.

What consumers want

It has been a breathless start to the year at motors.co.uk as we prepare for a burst of TV advertising.  The campaign will be conducted in a single region (Yorkshire) to allow us to test various concepts from creative through to sales and account management.

We are very excited by the creative we are set to roll-out and believe that it will have the dual impact of immediately increasing traffic and response, as well as increasing brand awareness of motors.co.uk.  As the UK’s second largest used car advertising network, recognition of the brand is too low despite it’s significant audience.  This creates a huge opportunity to build from our significant inventory and traffic levels to provide consumers with a fresh, trusted brand.

What has fascinated me most has been the insight from interrogating the consumer’s behaviour and emotions in used car search.  In addition to analysing our own search data and performing online surveys, we got to hear from a number of individuals in focus groups.

These groups revealed how imperfect the process is and the underlying nervousness in making a purchase.  Buying a car should be an exciting experience, and consumers do tend to feel an air of anticipation.  However, most of us aren’t petrol heads and so naturally suspect that we’re going to be “done over” in any deal.  The perceived information asymmetry between a dealer and a regular consumer is enormous.

Most consumers don’t understand how thin the margin is on a used car and suspect that they are paying hundreds or thousands of pounds more than the car is worth.  I believe the market could go further in increasing transparency in the process to provide people with confidence.  Personally, I enjoyed my purchase from Car Giant because I knew that I wouldn’t have to suffer the ignominy of a failed negotiation in front of my wife (flexing my muscles slightly as I buffed off a paint protector upsell).

Throughout the research, we discovered that consumers are underserved by the internet.  By that, I mean that the lack of confidence translates into a propensity to visit multiple sites (portal, review and dealer own) to arm themselves with as much information as possible.  (But even then, consumers don’t fully understand what they are being presented -  AutoTrader was frequently perceived as only having private ads, one person even expressed surprise that the price on AutoTrader was the same as the dealer’s (even though they were the same car))

Consequently, we found that although the first place people tend to look for a used car is online, 80% of people visit more than one website in the process (see the chart below).  As a dealer, this means that media spend across a network of sites is fundamental to capture response. 

Our target market tends to be consumers who are looking for more confidence in the car buying process, trying to form an opinion of their own without being rail-roaded by a friend or relative who is a petrol head (though this person tends to be taken along to help inspect the car and complete the purchase).  Therefore, we have a job to do to empower the consumer to allow them to find the selection of cars relevant to the search, regardless of whether they know exactly what make or model to start with. 

The TV campaign has been a shot of adrenaline for me in my capacity as a (wannabe) marketeer.  Brand is so easily taken for granted (and ignored), but I have realised through this process that as motors.co.uk we have the chance to show everyone that buying a used car really isn’t that scary and certainly not the domain of petrol heads only.