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.