From the beach to virtual islands, marketers are connecting with drivers

Some cars are for feeding the heart, while others are more for carrying the groceries. It's this dichotomy - the fact that some consumers buy for style and prestige and others go for practicality - that auto marketers are working to address in their latest round of campaigns. It's a tough balance to strike.Sure, user-generated content, hip online video campaigns, and social networking plays are important, especially when it comes to generating buzz for high-end brands among fanatical online bases. But even luxury buyers can be impatient with online frills and tricks, unless they're buying high-performance cars that evoke emotion and an obsession with the nuances of the product, says Milton Pedraza, CEO of The Luxury Institute, which tracks the attitudes of wealthy consumers. "I think it's all about executing the fundamentals extraordinarily well," he says.

Defining a personality

Those responsible for Audi's interactive marketing are well aware of the importance of a big, lush corporate site. "We know that 88 percent of all customers who purchase an Audi have visited the Audi brand site," says Scott Mellin, CEO of Denver's Factory Design Labs.

To build on the brand site, however, Factory Design needed to develop multiple personalities. Audi online campaigns have included one effort that lured time-pressed convenience buyers with cold details, and another which fanned the flames of enthusiasm among a passionately devoted, highly-educated fan base.

For example, to pitch the Audi Q7 SUV, Factory Design developed the "Seven Days" campaign, which gradually introduced potential buyers to the ways in which the car would fit into their daily routines. Buyers would typically encounter the "Seven Days" banners first, which, thanks to Active X scripting, would "know" what day and time it was when the user encountered the ad, and adjust content accordingly, along the lines of "It's 2 p.m. on Tuesday ... time to pick up the kids from their soccer game. And all of their friends."

The banners linked to a microsite that took things to the next level, giving consumers information on how the Q7 would look, feel, and work in real life. It included an online "configurator," which creates computer-generated images of the vehicle, renders exterior and interior colors and fabric, swaps wheels out, and offers seven different views of the SUV. Finally, if prospective buyers are intrigued enough to supply an e-mail address, Factory Design hits them with its "Seven Secrets" e-mail campaign, which pitched unique Audi Q7 features - such as its refrigerated glove box - every two weeks.

However, when it came to Audi's high-performance cars, it was time for a different approach to lure the brand's super-sophisticated consumer target, Mellin says. No need to tempt these folks with product features; they already obsess over every detail. To reach these avid fans who focus in particular on the Audi A6 and S6 performance cars, Factory Design partnered with fan sites such as audiworld.com and fourtitude.com. The fan sites helped Factory Design and Audi keep up the excitement by tempting them with high-end rich media content, such as videos that demonstrate the actual feel of hitting the road in an A6 or S6. The campaign generated a lot of heat, with record site traffic and hundreds of thousands of video downloads. "These partnerships play a huge role in making that happen," Mellin says.

Creating a meeting place

General Motors' Pontiac has a sports car that people love to talk about. To make sure consumers stay attached to it, Pontiac's agency created a Web hub for them to hang out in and talk about the cars they love. Pontiac's interactive agency Campfire LLC wanted to build buzz for a sexy sports car, a two-seater GXP performance model that competes with the BMW M series, but comes in at a much lower price. Campfire built a fan site for the model, which featured a mix of authentic user-generated content and discrete product information.

The challenge came in how to build such a site without coming across as a heavy-handed corporate shill site. So, the agency chose to create the hub for the Pontiac car in Second Life.

The result was "Motorati Island," a large block in Second Life devoted to Pontiac fan projects. If approved, consumers can build whatever they like, and have already taken on projects such as a monster truck track, a fashion boutique, drive-in cinema, and an auto-themed dance club. While the site remains in soft launch and isn't reporting sales figures, it appears to be a success in consumer terms: Nearly all six "sims," which comprise the user-created island, are already full.

Eventually, the island will feature a virtual Pontiac dealership, but that's not the point of the campaign, says Campfire's Michael Morello. "The idea is not for people to come in and make Pontiac stuff, it's for people who love cars to come and meet other car enthusiasts," he says.

Getting out the facts

On the other hand, Detroit's Carlson Marketing's mission on behalf of General Motors was to get the facts out and find a new way to connect with finicky 18- to 28-year-olds who haven't absorbed some of GM's key messages. GM had three main points it wanted to get across to them: the company had improved the style quotient across its whole line; it was far more philanthropic than young consumers had realized; and the automaker was addressing environmental issues.

The company's resulting site, givemeaxis.com, is an attempt to make sure the overall brand values get across. Anulcewicz describes givemeaxis.com as a "gateway" into General Motors, with introductory information on products, gm corporate philanthropy, hydrogen fuel-cell technology, and the like. When they're ready, the site directs young consumers to the appropriate GM division Web site.

Carlson has promoted the site largely through grass-roots efforts, such as establishing 2-man marketing teams on 25 college campuses. The teams give out banners, fliers, and posters and create local events pushing the three themes of the campaign. The grass-roots, offline handholding approach seems to have worked well. To date, since its soft launch in 2005, givemeaxis.com has generated 700,000 click-throughs to division sites and environmental documents on GM.com.