Why I'm so excited...

It’s been about a month since Motors.co.uk joined the Manheim family, and life has certainly been busy.  Now that I’m trapped on a long train journey, I wanted to take the opportunity to express how and why I’m so freaking excited about the future.

My appetite has been particularly satiated having watched physical auctions at the Leeds site over the last 2 days.  It really brought home the vision of integrating Motors.co.uk into the Manheim product set and the opportunity to create something unique for the UK automotive industry.

There are a number of work streams underway to identify and prioritise the development opportunities available to us – we are in a lucky position to have a large number of ways to build value together, but the trick to the success of the acquisition will be addressing the points in the right order.

We have a self-fulfilling path to success.  At a high level it’s not particularly complicated (or secret) and here’s how I see it:

• Integration with Manheim can help increase exposure of  Motors.co.uk in the dealer community
• A site with more advertising dealers creates a bigger pot for investment in building audience, which will build response for advertising dealers
• More response means more sales for our dealers
• Increased audience means better data that Motors and Manheim can use to help inform our customers about stock and pricing
• Enormous number of product development possibilities for reporting, transferring data, unifying systems that either significantly reduce dealer effort or improve ability to understand business performance
• Greater profits for our dealers .  QED

It is easy to ask “so what is the vision?” but the reality is that this hasn’t changed for either business - helping dealers to maximise profitability.  This was the driving force before the acquisition, but united we have many more tools to execute this.  As such, much of life is business as usual as we pick off the opportunities one-by-one.

From a Motors.co.uk perspective, the overriding theme of conversations is how we can make the site as efficient as possible in generating valuable response for advertising dealers.  This has two enormously exciting strands: 1) optimising the consumer journey on the site (making the site as enjoyable to use as possible) and 2) developing further products (or integrating existing products) to provide dealers with the tools to improve their business.

The vision also fits with AutoExposure and CAS whose products have a great fit, providing further depth to Manheim's product portfolio as well an opportunity to link systems and provide packages of enormous value to dealers.  Each of these businesses have products that are smarter than the average bear, and they're about to get smarter.

At this stage, I appreciate that this sounds like brown-nosing, non-descript, management guru waffle – but trust me it will become real.  Watching the cars line up in the lanes at Leeds, the above is clear, obvious and kid in a sweet shop exciting! 

ps - for insight into another team that are handling an exciting acquisition, have a look at Felix's blog on the EvenBase acquisition of Job Rapido.  Like the Motors/Manheim tie-up, I know that there is no way of ever conveying the amount of work (performed by many good friends of mine too) that will have been undertaken to complete the deal.  Good luck chaps!

Lent and the jeopardy of online journalism

For lent I gave up my holy trinity of websites - BBC, Daily Mail and Guardian - in the hope that I'd be opened up to a world of unhidden treasures.  I was mostly disappointed and believe it shows us to be at risk of increasingly poor content

I worry that the “free” nature of content on the net is reducing the quality of content we have access to.  The costs of good journalism against the paltry financial rewards of display advertising seem to make it an inevitability that without an understanding parent, you can end up like Richard Desmond and not bothering about online at all.  As someone who adores the internet and its breadth of content, this scares me.

I was unsure if my own consumption of online articles skewed this view.  My overwhelming sources of news content came from BBC News (and Sport), Mail Online and Guardian, to the point that I was compelled to give them up for lent and try and find new sources of enjoyment on the net.  The internet has the potential to offer you almost every piece of knowledge in the world, I shouldn’t be restricting myself to the football gossip on BBC Sport.

However, I do think that each of these sites are able to offer the experience they do through unique funding routes:

• BBC – with licence payer money, this site is effectively subscription based , with some advertising on non-UK IPs.  For speed of delivery it is unrivalled and it does offer “value for money”, though I do wonder whether people would actually pay for it if pushed in a form other than unjust (and poorly distributed) tax of the TV licence.  Despite being a heavy user, I also believe the existence of the BBC exacerbates the problem of content on the net.  Why would you pay when the BBC offers quality, free content (and free of advertising)?
• Daily Mail – competing on scale by trying to attract global brands with traffic to rival MSN, Yahoo etc, and also having the starting base of content written for the paper.  It should be stated that the viability of this has yet to be fully seen, but I’m pleased someone is trying.  It’s easy to be snobbish about the celebrity gossip, but I LOVE celebrity gossip.  
• Guardian – massively heavily staffed paper, trying to compete on the global level but has a parent who has a mandate to ensure content of this nature is in the public domain.  It is by far the best site for in-depth opinion and coverage of the media industry.

One of the main objectives was to see if there was anyone out there capable of providing the consistent breadth that the above 3 covered.  In short the answer is no.  Each of them is peerless in their specialities, but there are certainly gaps – primarily in opinion driven essays.  None of the alternatives were able to compete with the above 3 for timeliness of delivery which was my single biggest frustration.

-      Main sites that filled the void:

• Huffington Post  – Worth visiting for the guest blogs alone.  The news is shockingly light and rather too SEO heavy to make it easy to read.  However, I have greatly enjoyed the blogs on the site – in particular Greg Jenner whose narrative on history and application to today has entertained and challenged (check out this piece).  This is an excellent forum for politicians, celebrities etc to use and whilst I enjoy it, I’m often disappointed by how little they have to say (eg Gordon Brown’s thin efforts ) 
• Independent – The antisocial Facebook integration worked! I was frequently led to the site via articles other people read.   What’s more, I began to follow on the basis of specific friend’s readings.  What surprised me was how good some of the opinion pieces on sport were.  The news was bit disappointing though…
• Telegraph – I believe the Telegraph slightly squandered the opportunity to corner the “opinion” market with excellent columnists who say what they think, but the site seems to have tried to pic up the battle with Mail Online (and will lose) by going picture led.  This site is always worth a visit when Boris Johnson has submitted an article (think what you will of his political profile, but he is an outstanding journalist – with the quality of argument that is lacking on the internet).  Enormously disappointed at how slow the site was to update with news (and sometimes crash) 
• Economist – This is slightly cheating as I have full access as a subscriber (goes against the aim of seeing what you can get for free), but it’s so good that it’s worth a mention.  As a result of my exile, I spent significantly more time enjoying the site across print, iPad and online and enjoyed it.  Though I do wish they’d have a sports section… 
• New York Times - Visiting the site shows you why British newspaper sites are performing so well in the US, the layout is really poor and incredibly text focussed.  However, it benefits from some brilliant journalism with articles of depth and breadth of coverage.  Here are two articles that I read in one day on the site, great variety and both entertaining:  http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/travel/rock-cruises-bright-spots-for-the-cruise-and-music-industries.html?pagewanted=all and http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/nyregion/leyland-e-george-lets-his-mixtapes-do-the-preaching.html.  Carefully choose your articles on this site as you can only view 10 a month before the paywall comes up which feels a bit ridiculous outside of its core market – but I also acknowledge I offer them minimal commercial value, which makes me wonder if they should make such a big deal about not losing the mantle of world’s largest newspaper, after isn't it just a regional title? 

I was disappointed that I didn’t find myself drawn into a hidden world of quality blogs, though in part this was filled by Twitter which has opened my eyes to the content created on the net more than any site – do not get me started on Google News, it is dire.  Twitter has been a constant source of interesting information and links to new sources, though it was surprising how many times the links of interest were to my forbidden sites.  The only escape into blogs came from Guido Fawkes (my current Twitter favourite) and Back of the Net which is useful for providing both score updates and amusing comments on the big football matches.

So lent is over, I’m already sick of chocolate and I still haven’t been back to the sites I banned myself from.  I don’t feel less well informed (except on transfer gossip) and, in all honesty, I have probably spent less time reading articles on the internet.

My eyes haven’t been particularly opened, I knew about all of the above before and would be an occasional visitor to each, which either means I am crap at finding things on the net or there simply isn’t much out there.  What’s more, I continue to believe that the quality of online journalism will only deteriorate as it’s difficult to see how the economics can justify the investment.  The Huffington Post provides the most hope as it has approached things from an online only route, but even then relies on its status to attract relevant contributors.  I fear that like many traditional newspapers, the world of online journalism will require a few more philanthropists (or, more cynically, rich people looking to have a voice!).  

Blogs can quickly be made to sound important, but the reality is most of them are a bit rubbish really … I’m sure you’d agree with that!

A Daily Mail Child

I started my paper round a week before my 13^th birthday and I remember being taken aback by how many people read The Sun or Daily Mirror.  Why didn’t everyone read the Daily Mail like my parents did?  I noticed that the handful of houses that did take the Daily Mail were a bit tidier than those receiving red tops.

From a young age, I was hooked into the genius of the Daily Mail as the voice of those aspiring to the middle class.  For the last 3 years I have had the privilege to work for the group that publishes the title.  This week that came to an end as Motors.co.uk was acquired by Manheimfrom the Daily Mail & General Trust.

On a paper round of 35-40 houses, I would deliver at best one or two national broadsheets (only The Times and The Daily Telegraph) making them feel niche.  The Daily Mail, therefore, was my only understanding of a “quality” newspaper.  Holding fast to Thatcher’s vision, no media was probably more influential in my youth.

I know that the fashion is to view the title with cynicism, but I have grown to understand that the title is a masterstroke of positioning.  The target audience is middle aged housewives in lower/average middle class families, but its trick is that it feels like so much more to these readers and always holds the impression of being a quality newspaper without being snooty and “too wordy” (my mum’s words) like The Times. 

The paper faces an ageing readership and a society that is reading fewer newspapers, but the Mail rises strong online.  The profits may never be as big as print, but there is no doubting that the vision/strategy/luck of backing a celebrity news driven website has been the right one.   I felt a sense of pride when the site was named the most visited newspaper website in the world.  I chuckled that the mighty New York Times had to resort to a debate about audience measurement, I’m not sure too many care about comScore’s classification methods. 

The website became an addiction of mine.  Not because I worked within the same office where it was created, but because I am a shameless internet news junky.  Consequently, I have given up the Daily Mail website for lent (along with the Guardian and BBC websites – other mainstays).  My conclusion so far?  No other site is able to provide the immediacy and variety that I’ve become so used to. 

But the thing I’m really struggling to find on other sites is opinion.  I may not always agree with the Mail’s view (remember I’m not a housewife!), but at least there is one.  In this abstinence I have even considered a subscription to The Times online as no other site provides free access to strong (and professional) opinions.  With this I really hope that the government relaxes rules on the independence of television news. 

Fox News may irritate many, but it entertains significantly more.  I would love to see a Daily Mail news channel on TV.  I’m confident that opinionated (but never extremist) news content would make news accessible to the masses.

Although Motors.co.uk moves on to an exciting future with Manheim, I will find it hard to accept that I’m no longer part of the Mail machine (even though I was never properly involved).  But herein lies the paper’s ability to embed itself firmly in the hearts and minds of its loyal audience. 

We often hear theories about the future of media and the influence that the Mail will have should not be understated.  And what’s more, we shouldn’t be scared by it…

Good marketing

As a growing brand at Motors.co.uk, we spend a lot of time trying to think about how we can do things differently.  Whilst we exist commercially to increase response for car dealers, the route to how we achieve this is in making ourselves well known to consumers and also optimising the search for a used car.

An area that we believe serves both purposes is championing the cause of the motorist and ensuring that we get a fair deal with easy access to information.

Recently this area overlapped with my personal life when my son grew out of his baby car seat.  A good friend had opted for a rear facing car seat and had made me aware of the key safety benefits (eg 7 times more likely to survive a crash).  I understood the basic physics and I felt compelled to make the purchase.  What I couldn’t understand though was when I searched the major retailers websites I couldn’t find any rear facing car seats.

Internet access proved vital, drawing on the excellent www.rearfacing.co.uk as well as retailers www.pushchairsandcarseats.co.uk and www.incarsafetycentre.co.uk.  But most frequently I found myself on the pages of the manufacturers themselves to make sense of ridiculous fitting requirements and which cars fitted which models.  When I would find a model that I liked, I had to spend time Google’ing to find whether the model was available in the UK – invariably they weren’t.

I found myself indignant at the poor choice in the UK, particularly given that the manufacturer sites I was looking at were brands we recognise in the UK.  But for some reason UK consumers are not privileged to have the option to buy the safer option.

Clearly retailers are worried about the potential extra work of installation which is a fairly appalling reason to not offer the choice (simply reflect it in the pricing).  The car seats are expensive compared to forward facing, but this I’m sure is a victim of the low volumes being ordered into the UK.  Fundamentally though, the British consumer needs to have the choice.

I certainly don’t want to suggest that rear facing car seats should be mandatory, but we should be at least be given the choice and education as to the benefits of both.

If I had struggled to find this information, having had the benefit of a friend who was a minor expert and having spent hours reading various articles on the internet, I was fairly certain that the general public would be lacking.  Consequently, at Motors.co.uk we commissioned research into awareness of rear facing car seats.  Unsurprisingly, but disappointingly, 53% of parents felt there was a lack of information, and 52% of parents would consider buying rear facing once presented with the safety benefits.

The survey allowed us to get valuable media time for a number of experts on the subject including Helena (rearfacing.co.uk) and Jullian Preston-Powers (neuroprotective specialist at the University of Sussex).  I also made a couple of radio appearances too (there was even rumours at one point of a slot on This Morning).

In all honesty, I was disappointed by the initial media coverage as I passionately believe this is a subject that is dreadfully covered in the UK.  This fits squarely with the Motors brand of empowering the motorist and promoting choice and so we will continue to investigate how we can increase its exposure.

January was a humbling month in general for our marketing team as we also launched our “most deserving” campaign to give a local hero up to £10,000 towards a car as well as £2,000 for a charity of their choice (mostdeserving.motors.co.uk).  Some of the stories have blown us away, with individuals who set an incredible example of selflessness and support for others.

The end game of our marketing budget remains the same, but it is certainly rewarding when we are able to find ways of using it to coincide with pushing good causes. It’s too early to say what the correct mix within our budget should be, but it has certainly encouraged the team at Motors.co.uk to think wider. It's nice to think that marketing an online brand can go beyond Google, and influence change.


Ps it should be noted that since we launched the campaign John Lewis made available the Recaro Polaric rear facing car seat, but it’s still not a good enough choice…

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."