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.

The Facebook opportunity for dealers

Last week, AutoExposure launched its new Facebook Business Profile Pages for automotive dealers.  I am incredibly excited about this product as it creates a wealth of opportunities for dealers and allows AutoExposure to flex its creative muscle. 

However, like many businesses, I think dealers are wondering how Facebook and social media will really make a difference to their business. Don’t people just use Facebook to spy on friends and Twitter to stalk celebrities?!

I thought it worth laying out some of the trends surrounding social media and why there is a real opportunity for dealers to capitalise on its potential.

• Facebook is the second most visited site in the UK after Google, and accounts for the most page views in the UK (16.4%) (Hitwise Oct 2010)

Get your business and cars on Facebook and they will be exposed to an enormous amount of eyeballs (if communicated properly)

•  37% of people use social media as part of their car buying process (FlyReaserch Feb 2011

           Because social media is a trusted environment, people often use it as a way of asking questions of friends.  Each of these people becomes a potential customer.

            Building a relationship with users in social media allows you to become part of their decision making

             This number is only going to rise

• A “Like” from a consumer is seen by all of their friends.  The average user has 130 friends

How difficult is it to get a customer to tell people that he endorses your services?  A simple click on “like” means that it will be seen by that customer’s 130 friends. 

Once a customer has liked your page, they are available for you to interact with offers, promotions and other conversations.  (apologies if I use the word “conversation” a lot, but it’s the best way I can think of describing the ongoing engagement with consumers, so different to a simple newsletter)

With Facebook being a closed environment (ie the site tries to keep you within Facebook), it is almost worth thinking of Facebook and the Internet as two separate things.  Just as websites became a new shop window, so too does Facebook (and other social media) allow dealers the chance to add another façade. 

The difference now is that customers can talk back, which increases the need for a professional approach to managing the page.  There are plenty of examples of consumers building negative campaigns against brands, here’s a particularly amusing one http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Cameron-wants-change-Give-him-30p-and-tell-him-to-Fk-Off/115547365137261

It is better to be part of this process and be in a position to respond professionally.  By inviting consumers to share comments with you, there will be chances to learn about your business, but also to build a personality and relationship with consumers.  Negative feedback is a fact of business, and car dealers are often an easy target given the emotion of the purchase.  But, ignoring the behaviour is dangerous.

Instead, why not lead with offers and promotions for customers who engage with you?  If a customer has remembered your brand through Facebook, there is more chance that they will feel an affinity with you and ignore the competition. 

Remember that anything you post on social media will live forever, so make sure it speaks properly for your business.  Do not confuse your business profile with your personal one and swap banter with mates.  As a business owner, make sure that any administrators of your accounts use a consistent voice that is appropriate to your brand.

Fundamentally though, simply building a page isn’t enough.  With a website, you can get away with not updating it.  With social media, unless you maintain an appropriate level of conversation (ie do not SPAM), you will disappear.  But the reward of interaction is well worth it.

At AutoExposure we have integrated car search tools into the dealer’s Facebook Business Profile Page allowing consumers to not only see about offers, opening times etc, but to actually search for stock.  Our hope is that it means our dealers always have something to talk about and an additional response tool.

The real excitement internally is not with the launch, but with the direction we can take the product, we have loads of ideas and will get lots more.  It will be great to work with our dealers as social media rapidly becomes an important part of the dealer’s media mix.  To badly paraphrase Hot Chocolate; “it started with a like”…

(not wanting to push the sales message too much, but here's an example of our product)

Father and Son

I know you’re not supposed to live your dreams through your children … apparently.  But there is one vision I have for Ted which I find hard to shake, the idea that he will have excellent taste in music.

Taste is obviously individual, so by excellent taste in music, I mean music that I like.  Rather than enjoying only my current tastes in music, I have always had a vision that he would educate me and challenge each other to develop our musical tastes.  At four month’s old, this might be a lot to expect. 

Having watched any real chance of becoming a musician pass me by (I say “real” because I still harbour a dream), I now have to turn my ambitions to my heir.  Perhaps we could be like the Mystery Jets where the song writing is done by father and son.

I recently started reading Washington Square by Henry James and came across this exchange:

“my dear Austin … do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?”

“Good for what?” asked the Doctor.  “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.”

From this assertion Mrs Penniman saw no reason to dissent; she possibly reflected that her own great use in the world was owing to her aptitude for many things.

“of course I wish Catherine to be good,” the Doctor said next day; “but she won’t be any the less virtuous for not being a fool.  I am not afraid of her being wicked; she will never have the salt of malice in her character.  She is as good as good bread, as the French say; but six years hence I don’t want to have to compare her to good bread and butter.”

Of course the Doctor comes across as incredibly conceited, but I adore his core faith that his daughter will be good.  I believe this is a kind tribute to the girl’s mother’s (who passed away shortly after her birth).  It is soured by the Doctor’s belief that intelligence is fundamental to a person’s overall “worth”.

I am similar.  I have no doubt that with Bianca’s parenting, Ted will be an outstanding young man  However, when it comes to the idea of his musical tastes, surely I’m allowed some fun?

I had hoped that the songs Bianca and I would sing to Ted would be sufficiently interesting to build his interests.  I remember hearing Kelli Scarr saying that she sings “helpless” by Neil Young to her baby boy.  I didn’t even know about Neil Young until I was 20.

What to sing to your child is a tricky one and whilst struggling to think of something “cool” to sing, I have to resort to a tried and tested song to soothe Ted in the hope of sending him to sleep.  The current favourite songs that seem to work (or have worked at least once) with helping Ted to sleep are:

-          Hey Jude (sung as “Hey Ted”) – The Beatles

-          Sloop John B – Beach Boys

-         We All Stand Together – Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus - great for duets with Bianca

-          Bad Romance – Lady Gaga – shocking I know, but the shock of the “RAR” seems to settle

More embarrassingly is the mix of made up songs to nursery rhyme tunes based around “Teddy Boy, go to sleep”.  We haven’t progressed to the genius levels of Kimya Dawson who recorded an excellent album for her daughter ("Pee Pee in the Potty" being a favourite).

There has been some positive signs though, Ted seemed to enjoy hearing the ukulele or electric guitar.  When he didn’t scream I wanted to gush “he’s going to be a guitar player too!”  In reality he was probably just curious about the strange person and even stranger sound being projected at him.

I am aiming to influence, not brain wash, but being a control freak my natural tendency is to brain wash.  I appreciate that any child with Bianca or my genes will happily rebel against any direction we set for them.  As such, I need to try and foster the environment from which great taste in music will emanate.

My taste in music has little to do with my parents, but this may be their genius!  Their taste was squarely middle-of-the-road, and whilst this has provided me with a fascination with 80s music such as Dire Straits, Genesis etc, I can remember feeling exposed as other kids began talking about The Smiths, U2 and REM (hardly niche acts - but that was as edgy as Lowestoft got).

I’m now beginning to freak out slightly more about the lack of control I have over this.  The overriding fear is that Ted will sit Bianca and I down one day and announce that he likes house music or R&B (and not the cool edgy stuff, but disposable chart stuff).  I feel a desire to make some mix cds in preparation for such an emergency.

But should this be my real fear?  Should I not be more scared by the idea that he becomes intensely interested in music and ditches everything to “make it” in a band?  Clearly this is acceptable if he becomes successful, but as a parent you quickly play the percentages and want the best for your child.  Would it be more scary to have Ted pass through education with a solid professional career ahead of him, for him to turn around and pursue music?   Financially it is definitely scarier. 

Ultimately, what will always scare me is that I cannot control how Ted grows up.  I can only influence it.  But I can’t even control the way I influence him…

The First Time

As I spend more and more time travelling across the country on the train, I have been trying to find different ways for my ipod to keep me entertained and I took the spectacularly nerdy decision to work my way through entire back catalogues of artists.

It is rare these days to even listen to an album from start to finish.  I believe shuffle a cardinal sin.  A truly great album should have had the track listing agonised over.  There are plenty of examples of bands leaving off great tunes as they didn’t “fit” with the album (“hold me thrill me kiss me” was written for Achtung Baby, essentially a dark album about divorce).  I believe in the sanctity of the album creation.

Working through a back catalogue is fascinating as you can chart the evolution of the band.  I predominantly buy the first album of a band, viewing anything later as no longer fresh, but this is also because bands are under so much pressure to deliver immediately.  We rarely get bands making it super big on their 4^th or 5^th album.

First up was U2.  Judge me if you must, but they are the band that have had the single biggest impact on my musical taste.  I have welcomed listening again to the punk influence of Boy maturing into the intelligent anger of War.  The evolution into super group with the bad hair cuts but anthems of October and Unforgettable Fire (with a pretentious, but electric live album on the way) before Joshua Tree which catapulted the band in the US and helped create U2’s caricature.  The jarring industrial sound of Achtung Baby is an incredible relief after the sensibilities of Rattle and Hum.

But the most important of all their records will always be Zooropa.  It will likely always be my favourite record.  I bought it blind having heard about Bono’s duet with Frank Sinatra (on I’ve Got You Under My Skin – incredible).  I didn’t realise that this song would only be a b-side on the release of Stay (Faraway So Close). 

On the same day I bought Zooropa, I bought Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke.  As I read the book and listened to the album on loop I was transformed into another world.  I had never heard anything like this, it was what the future sounded like.  I believe it is still what the future should sound like.  The unique guitar sound on Numb, the intensity of Stay, the humour and filth of Lemon (particularly for a teenage boy).  The First Time became intensely personal, and The Wanderer introduced me to Johnny Cash for which I shall be eternally grateful.

And to think that the album was recorded in a short time (by U2’s standards) whilst they were in the middle of a 2 year world tour staggers me.  It is a great album to listen to at night, which is probably reflective of the time it was recorded.

I must admit I’m a little disappointed by the more recent U2 albums which seem to try and recall the techniques of Joshua Tree (and to a certain extent the ballads of Achtung Baby), but that’s because in my mind I’ve already heard the perfect record.  But maybe the band was right, as the “logical” step from Zooropa was Passengers, which I enjoyed but only as it made me feel avant garde at the time (I appreciate the irony) – Larry Mullen Jr described the band as having “disappeared up its own arse”.

It’s probably a brave/stupid thing to broadcast my passion for this discography, and I do sorely wish Bono wouldn’t make it so easy for people to poke fun at him, but I can’t deny my roots (I also feel enormously uncool to describe an album released in 1994 as my roots).  I have compounded the issue by being a real geek about the band, reading books, collecting CDs, recording live shows, calling at Edge’s guitar technician during soundchecks ("Dallas").  But being a nerd about music is important to me and these train journeys afford me the time to revel in it.

Targeted advertising and the errors of a 17 year old

I had a Saturday job working at Boots when I was 17, and would occasionally work the perfume counter.  This led to me building a decent “nose” for detecting perfumes.  I refined this skill, thinking that it would be a useful technique for chatting up girls.  If I knew their fragrance, maybe I could make guesses about their personality.  It wasn’ t useful.  It was creepy.  Rather than thinking this a skill, it appeared that I’d raided their dressing table.

Effectively, all I was doing (honestly) was experimenting with targeted marketing…

The ultimate end point for marketing effectiveness is to target the individual, the “market of one”.  As I penned thoughts on this during my degree in 2000, I had no concept of how close we would get in such a short time frame. 

Although we’re not at the extremes of the Minority Report, with Tom Cruise being welcomed personally by a computer upon walking into GAP, tools such as Facebook advertising and retargeted display allow us to get pretty darned close.

Whilst I’m loathe to use this as a form of therapy … I must admit being in a moral dilemma as to where I position myself on the issue.  As a professional, I want to target potential car buyers as well as I can, and with little wastage on those who are not in the market (aside from the “brand building” usefulness).  As an individual though, I hear complaints from friends who deem targeted advertising a form of intrusion. 

This may upset some, but my instinct is that more targeted advertising allows the user to have access to better content and services.  We give little thought to the fact that adverts are paying for the TV programme we enjoy watching, and we often find ourselves enjoying the advertising itself – usually because it speaks to us as a demographic.

All advertising is targeted, it is a waste otherwise.  But how targeted does it have to be before it becomes a violation of information we have shared in good faith with friends, or shopping we have been doing in private?

Amazon’s recommendation engine is now part and parcel of how we purchase media on the internet, and yet this is an ever growing monolith of data and rules designed to extract the maximum spend from you.

I suspect the answer lies, as ever, in common sense.  Targeted advertising can work if it is subtle and helpful, or more significantly, not blatantly obvious and a pain in the backside.  How many of us have been recommended books on Amazon that are wildly inappropriate for us, but linked to an embarrassing book we’ve bought for a friend?  Only recently I had a play on the ScrewFix website for a new extractor fan for my bathroom.  I soon got bored of being served targeted adverts on extractor fans!

Whilst I would like to think advertisers will regulate themselves, I think the reality is that the media platforms will have to take firm stances on this.  At the moment, Facebook and Twitter have strict rules on some elements of advertising (eg not allowing dating ads to be served unless someone has stated “single” in their profile), but will they be tempted from this when public companies and quarterly targets are under pressure?  These sites (Google included) are in a precarious position, whilst they are enormous machines, they are the creation of a public who has craved their services.  As soon as this trust is breached, the sites could lose market share very quickly.

You could argue that Facebook is already at tipping point, particularly as the fastest growing segment is aged over 50.  How long before credible independent republics of social network are created?

As a marketeer, I will always try to improve the effectiveness of our marketing spend, but it is short sighted to “spam” our potential customers.  We owe it to deliver a consistently good user experience, and I believe advertising should play along these lines.  In fact, I’m hoping that we can be cleverer with targeting and use it to build a relationship with consumers … it will take discipline to not make the same mistakes I did as a 17 year old – that definitely wasn’t effective.