Dodge is in the midst of launching their new cross-over-utility vehicle, Journey, and is depending on more digital marketing than they ever have before. The Journey is a competitively priced mid-size crossover utility vehicle that Dodge is hoping will attract a high percentage of conquest customers to the brand.

Early in April, Dodge took over the homepage on AOL, Yahoo! and MSNBC advertising the Journey with a tie-in to their new corporate campaign. The period during the home page takeover drove internet attention for Dodge.com to near period highs.

Dodge.com’s attention over those days was driven by unique visitors to the Journey model page –peaking on April 11th at almost 50% of the sites total unique visitors.

So it appears the advertising worked, it drove traffic (increased unique visitors) and awareness (attention) of Journey. But was Dodge able to get the conquest prospects they were targeting?

Compete’s Behavior Match can help auto makers target a conquest audience with their advertising. By examining the density of competitive brand shoppers on those sites in the month prior to Dodge’s advertising, March of 2008, we can see which site might offer the best reach.

• MSNBC and AOL were both good sites for targeting competitive prospects, as they were more saturated with folks shopping competitive brands online than other sites.
• While yahoo.com had the largest number of people looking at all the brands, it indexed on par with the general population (98).
• By looking at the sites with the higher index, we see which sites were better locations for Journey to spend money. In this case, msnbc.com and aol.com had the richer vehicle shopping audience.

Targeting Journey advertising on msnbc.com and aol.com gave Dodge an opportunity to get the vehicle in front of competitive shoppers. If they are able to convert them into sales these are customers the brand will welcome with ”Open Arms.”

In October, Chevrolet launched a newly redesigned Malibu into the entry sedan segment hoping that this could finally be the car that breaks the strangle hold the imports have held in the segment since the Ford Taurus lost its footing back in early 2000.

Compete tracks monthly lower funnel shopping activity on 3rd party automotive web sites, and since its media launch in October the Chevy Malibu has increased its shoppers by over 300% to take the lead in the import vehicle dominated segment.

To be successful in this segment, Chevrolet knows it needs to get on the list of Honda Accord and Toyota Camry shoppers which had eluded previous versions of the Malibu. In December, Honda Accord shoppers cross shopped the Malibu 12% of the time, up from only 2.3% in September. Likewise, Toyota Camry shoppers considered the Malibu 10.5% of the time – up from 3.2% in September.

Chevrolet’s “car that can’t be ignored” has also driven Chevrolet.com traffic to a period high, putting it ahead of Toyota.com for the first time since October 2006 when the redesigned Chevy Silverado launched.

Chevrolet has good reason to believe they may be re-establishing a domestic automotive company as contender in the entry sedan segment.

As the strike among the Writer’s Guild of America may be driving viewers away from prime-time TV favorites, automotive marketers are suggesting they are seeking alternative channels to reach prospective customers. Personal social networking sites on the internet are one channel marketers are anxious to better use to their advantage.

Since consumers are already spending time on these sites it is natural for marketers to try to place their product based on target audience for the networking site. We used the Compete Behavior Match product to take a closer look at the other sites visited by automotive brand shoppers in December. Behavior Match indexes overlap of a targeted segment with domains against the general internet population to the same sites. We found some interesting overlap occurring between these sites and brand shoppers:

• Iyomu.com indexed high for Ford, Chrysler and Chevrolet. This site is targeted at young adults touting itself as the “social networking site for grownups”.
• Imports, Toyota and Honda index very low with blackplanet.com – a social network directed specifically at African-Americans. Chevrolet shared the most visitors with this site.
• Toyota and Honda indexed highest with mashable.com and friendster.com – sites that target a younger demographic
• Chrysler shoppers were more likely to visit yuku.com; a site that has grown traffic significantly since June 2007.
• Female targeted site teamsugar.com indexed high for all the brands but particularly for Chrysler shoppers.
• Social networking leader myspace.com indexed close to average for all brands with only Chevrolet enjoying a slightly higher share of shoppers in the visitor pool.

By understanding where they currently index high, brands can see what natural associations are occurring or if current advertising is driving shopping behavior. But is volume of overlap the whole story? Are these sites generating engaged referrals?

Looking at December referrals from myspace.com to the automotive brand sites shows a broad range in the engagement of referrals:

• Toyota, the manufacturer that indexed the lowest with myspace.com had the most engaged referrals, averaging stays of over 8 minutes per visitor. They also had a much lower bounce rate, meaning fewer of their referrals left the site immediately after being referred.
• Chevrolet had the most referrals from myspace.com but the highest bounce rate at 88%.
• Chrysler has an interesting position with myspace.com indexing right on average with shared visitors and being middle of the pack for engaging referrals and bounce rate. Perhaps Chrysler is striking the best balance between quantity and quality.

Perhaps this is a fair alternative to prime time television advertising as marketers can target an audience that aligns with their brand and reach consumers shopping for vehicles that utilize social network sites to get “connected.”

DISRUPT – meaning to throw into confusion or disorder.

This was General Motors’ plan on Wednesday, October 17th as they launched digital media for the newly redesigned Chevy Malibu. The campaign titled “Disrupt” set out to get people to notice their vehicle. What they did was increase Chevrolet.com’s share of internet attention by 167% on that day.

Continue reading “Chevrolet Disrupts Sedan Market” »

In June, Saturn started a new marketing campaign inviting people to a local Saturn dealer to test drive the Saturn Aura and two dominant segment competitors, the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. As part of their “Rethink American” campaign it is a bold, confident move, pitting the Aura against the automotive industries equivalent of Goliath.

I have to admit that I wasn’t sure about this campaign. I thought all Saturn was going to do was give Aura shoppers an easy opportunity to check out the competition and not attract true Camry and Accord shoppers.

Compete measures automotive demand on a monthly basis and in June and July the Aura has reach all time high shopping levels in a market and a segment that is down year over year.

But has Saturn been able to attract Camry and Accord shoppers to consider the Aura? The Compete cross shop data says yes! The chart below shows the percent of Camry and Accord shoppers cross shopping the Aura and it has been climbing through the year.

In contrast, the percent of Aura shoppers also shopping a Camry or Accord dropped in June to the lowest percent this year. Could it be that in June they went directly to the showroom to compare these vehicles?

The test drive campaign seems to have focused Aura shoppers on their product and increased consideration from these two key competitors. Those are two things that would make any marketing team happy.

Americans love their right to choose and they are choosing import vehicles. For the first time since 1906, neither Ford nor Chevrolet topped the automotive sales charts; Toyota took the lead. As domestic auto manufacturers lose market share to foreign competition, are they also losing consumer interest?

Looking at visits to both domestic and import OEM websites in April 2007, there is a nearly even split in interest between these two groups. At a state level, however, this same metric indicates where this interest truly lies - and it’s not evenly dispersed. The chart below shows traffic to automotive manufacturers’ sites.

Domestic sites are sill getting a higher share of visits from much of the US – and whether it’s related or not, more politically conservative states lean domestic.

• Despite Toyota’s $1.28 billion plant in Texas, the state is loyal to American cars. Additionally, the skew towards Domestic OEMs has grown year of year, with a 3.5% increase in domestic OEMs’ share of automotive sessions.
• Michigan, the heart of American Auto Manufacturing, visit Domestic sites at a much greater rate than Import OEM sites.
• Strict on emissions, California leans heavily towards Import OEM sites.

Domestic sites are still getting attention but are they engaging customers when they get them there? The answer when looking at average stay is yes, but so are the import sites. When looking at the top five brands over the last 13 months Chevrolet has consistently led the way in length of stay, but Honda and Toyota have never been far behind.

Though import auto makers are grabbing market share, at least online, domestic OEMs are still part of the consideration process. With so many “red” states leaning towards American cars, maybe political campaigns are the answer to American auto makers’ sales dilemma.