Internet consumer auto pricing and research company TrueCar, Inc. is reaching out to women, fans of auto racing, and fans of women who race autos with a project that includes backing a roster of women in different top categories, and a channel to cultivate new female racers starting from the development circuit. TrueCar founder Scott Painter tells Marketing Daily that the "Women Empowered" initiative reflects the fact that women over-index for auto shopping, but that it also offers TrueCar an opportunity to get noticed in a space that is dominated by men, and where a lot of big brand marketing dollars go behind something of an old-boy's club of drivers. "As a brand, we have looked very carefully at what would be most relevant for us and our audience," he says. "So as a data-driven company, when we look at the dollars sponsors put behind drivers, we find that those big names in racing come with a cost. They have a high percentage of winning, but they also come with much less impact in terms of return on investment for a brand or dollar spent. We believe we will get a much bigger impact from backing very strong drivers who may not be traditional [or expected to win]." Painter adds that 8% of wins are by women, while 95% of marketing dollars back men. "So the ROI on women over men is positive. So, actually you aren't as likely to pick a winner if you pick a male driver. Also, at the end of the day what we stand for at TrueCar is empowering the disadvantaged buyer. So there's great symmetry between that and empowering women on the racetrack. Katherine [Legge, one of TrueCar's racers,] says when she gets behind the wheel, the car doesn't know she's a girl. That's what we try to do for people who are shopping for a vehicle." Besides Legge, who races on the IndyCar circuit with Jay Penske's Dragon Racing, the initial 2012 TrueCar Racing Team comprises Shannon McIntosh, who races in the USF2000 Series; Shea Holbrook for the Pirelli World Challenge Series; Ashley Freiberg on the Star Mazda Series; Emilee Tominovich on the Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup Series; and Rally America Series racer Verena Mei. The company also plans to have a car and sponsored driver in the IndyCar Series, and a Baja 1000 team for 2012, which will be made up entirely of women drivers. Also on tap is a driver development program to bring young women to auto racing at the karting level and support them up to premier racing series like IndyCar, the American Le Mans Series, the X-Games and Grand Am. As part of the promotional activity around the women racers the company is launching a VIP Sweepstakes on its Facebook platform awarding one fan and a guest a "PitCrew Experience" at an upcoming race with Legge, who drives the No. 6 TrueCar Lotus Dallara DW12. The grand prize includes two team credentials for the weekend events, hotel accommodations and roundtrip airfare. TrueCar's new agency, Santa Monica, Calif.-based Donat/Wald + Haque, has been documenting the races and putting together background footage, which is being posted at a microsite on TrueCar.com. Painter says the company is also touting its race team via its partnership with Yahoo that puts TrueCar racing content on Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Sports and women's lifestyle channel Yahoo!Shine. Painter says the racers will "become TrueCar spokespeople in a very real way. They will be brand ambassadors spending time meeting fans, talking about TrueCar." TrueCar has also experimented with national advertising, and Painter says in the 13 or so races this year, there will be a focus on local race markets, and potentially long-form commercials.
There is a limit to what people will pay for unlimited data plans. Despite finding that nearly half of consumers don’t know how much mobile data they use every month, two-thirds of them are unwilling to pay more than $50 a month for their service plans, according to new research from Parks Associates. Even at that level, unlimited data could become an expensive proposition, says Harry Wang, director of mobile research at the firm. “Consumers’ budgets have a limit, and carriers cannot expect people to pay more for the data,” Wang tells Marketing Daily. “A lot of the current solution –- throttling –- isn’t doing well with consumers. They hate that kind of experience. At a certain point, they will ask for a certain remedy from the carriers.” It’s time, Wang says, for the wireless carriers to “shift consumers’ perception away from raw data to the experience created by their data services.” With more than 90% of smartphone owners downloading apps at an average of two per month, people will spend more than $14 billion this year on downloads, according to Parks Associates. To keep up with the growing demand, wireless operators may look to tie their offerings and data to popular apps and services, offering differing types of plans to different consumers, based on the way they use their phones, Wang says. Such models have begun being used in overseas markets, he says. “At some point [U.S. carriers] have to stop branding the services as unlimited and begin stressing experience services,” Wang says. “Recognizing different types of needs and services would be more appropriate than monetizing on just data consumption.”
Harris Interactive has provided more detail on the equity rankings of beverage brands within its 2012 Harris Poll EquiTrend study, based on surveying consumers about 1,500-plus brands over 127 product categories. Harris had reported that two beverage brands made the list of 15 brands across all categories deemed “mega-brands” by dint of having been ranked #1 within their respective categories every year since 2005: Coca-Cola (soft drinks) and Gatorade (sports drinks). Here are more, just-released specifics on how various beverages categories played out: Beverage Brands of the Year: Non-alcoholic beverage brands ranked by consumers as #1 within their categories (in addition to the two mega-brands above) include: Green Mountain (coffee); Diet Coke (diet soft drink); Lipton Iced Tea (bottled ice tea); Lipton Teas (hot tea); SoBe Adrenaline Rush Energy Drink (energy drink); Juicy Juice (fruit-flavored drink); Tropicana Juices (fruit juice); Poland Spring (bottled water); Goya Coco Water (coconut water); and Glaceau vitaminwater (enhanced water). Green Mountain led 13 other ground-coffee brands on the basis of earning the highest quality and purchase-consideration scores. The other six coffee brands that exceeded the average equity score for the category (in order) are Folger’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Millstone, Eight O’Clock, Maxwell House and Caribou. Harris declined to reveal how Starbucks or the other six brands studied fell in the rankings, because its policy is not to reveal the equity scores of brands that did not score above the average for the category, according to a spokesperson for the researcher. Green Mountain “is by no means the best-known coffee brand, but it is clear that those who do know it love it,” Harris Interactive EVP Robert Fronk points out. “Its high standing may also be a reflection of the efficacy in ‘doing well by doing good.’ It has attained a reputation as an exceptional corporate citizen. One implication from this study is that good corporate citizens that also produce high-quality products are very likely to generate exceptional levels of brand equity.” Within carbonated soft drinks, Coca-Cola is followed by Pepsi, Sprite, 7-Up and Dr Pepper. Within diet CSDs, Diet Coke is followed by Sprite Zero, Diet Dr Pepper and Coke Zero. Among energy drinks, SoBe Adrenaline Rush is followed by the Amp and Rock Star brands. Harris noted that Glaceau vitaminwater, which was the only brand among enhanced waters to exceed the category’s average, showed particularly strong year-over-year momentum. Among non-enhanced bottled waters, Poland Spring is followed by Deer Park, Arrowhead, Ice Mountain, Aquafina and Dasani. In fruit juices, Tropicana is followed by Ocean Spray, Florida’s Natural, Welch’s, Minute Maid and Dole. In fruit-flavored drinks, Juicy Juice is followed by Kool-Aid and Capri Sun. In hot teas, runners-up to Lipton include Bigelow, Twinings, Celestial Seasonings and Tazo. In bottled teas, Lipton is followed by Luzianne and Turkey Hill. Alcoholic Beverage Brands of the Year: Category leaders include regional Yuengling Traditional Lager (full-calorie beer); Michelob Ultra (light beer); Glenlivet Single Malt (Scotch whiskey) and Skyy (vodka). Full-calorie beer brands following Yuengling are Blue Moon, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale, Guinness Stout, Samuel Adams Lager, Modelo Especial, Becks, Heineken and Corona Extra. Light beers following Michelob Ultra are Corona Light, Heineken Premium Light, Budweiser Select, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite and Miller High Life Light. Scotches following Glenlivet are Glenfiddich, Bushmills Irish Whiskey, Chivas Regal, Jameson Iris Whiskey and Jack Daniel’s. Vodkas following Skyy are Grey Goose, Ketel One and Svedka.
Ace Hardware ranked highest in customer satisfaction among home improvement retailers for a sixth consecutive year, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Home Improvement Retailer Satisfaction Study. Having a helpful and knowledgeable sales staff and making the shopping process easy are key drivers of customer satisfaction, according to the study, which measures customer satisfaction with home improvement retail stores based on performance in five factors. They are staff and service (including availability, courtesy, knowledge); store facility (including ease of finding merchandise and cleanliness); merchandise (including availability and product information); price; and sales and promotions. Ace Hardware achieves a score of 781 on a 1,000-point scale and performs particularly well in staff and service and store facility. Lowe's ranks second in the study for the second consecutive year with a score of 769, and performs particularly well in the merchandise factor. Overall customer satisfaction has declined slightly among all but one of the retailers included in the study. However, high-ranking retailers continue to differentiate themselves through their knowledgeable and courteous staff and shopper-friendly processes like checkout and returns. "While many retailers have struggled to right-size their staff with the down economy, Ace Hardware and Lowe's clearly have kept the focus on their customers," said Christina Cooley, senior manager of the home improvement industries practice at Westlake Village, Calif.-based J.D. Power and Associates, in a release. "To create delighted customers, home improvement retailers must assist customers quickly, help them find the items that they need, and do this with a customer-friendly attitude." High customer satisfaction leads to store loyalty with 64% of customers rating their retailer "outstanding" are likely to return to the store or the same chain of hardware stores the next time they shop for home improvement products, compared with just one-fifth of customers not rating their retailer "outstanding" who are likely to do the same. High-ranking retailers not only have a lower merchandise return rate, but also receive higher satisfaction ratings for their return process. Forty-five percent of customers indicate that they returned merchandise in the past 12 months. "If retailers' staff are providing the helpful, informative assistance that customers require, there's a less likely chance the customer will have to return the merchandise, which not only keeps the customer satisfied, but also helps to mitigate the inconvenience," said Cooley. J.D. Power and Associates' social media research also reinforces the study findings, as the main conversations taking place online about home improvement retailers relate to consumer preference for knowledgeable and professional customer service, seeking interaction with sales staff who have professional or real-life experience (rather than seasonal employees) and retailer loyalty and willingness to travel farther for the right advice/service, materials and price. The study is based on responses from more than 6,100 customers who purchased a home improvement product or service within the previous 12 months from a retail store that sells home improvement products. Customers were asked to evaluate their primary home improvement retailer. The study was fielded in January and February 2012.
As part of Procter & Gamble's corporate association with the National Football League, the Cincinnati-based CPG giant's Tide laundry brand will be "Official Laundry Detergent of the NFL." The multi-year deal, starting with the 2012 NFL season, includes sponsorship of all 32 NFL teams. Procter & Gamble's two-year-old corporate-level association with the league involves several brands, but Tide is the first to sign individual deals with all NFL teams, making it one of only two brands -- Gatorade is the other -- to have done so. As part of the deal, Tide gets to use NFL branding across its portfolio. Tide also gets to use logos and do specific marketing for the individual teams. Sundar Raman, marketing director for North American Fabric Care, tells Marketing Daily that the partnership is a good fit for Tide because the NFL is the number-one sport for women -- ahead of the Olympics, in which Tide is also present; and also because the 32 teams use the product to clean players' uniforms. "And the NFL is the number-one sport. We have 100 million customers so it's a huge opportunity for us," he says. Raman says the company hasn't developed marketing plans yet, but that Tide is "looking to do a completely integrated program across multiple touchpoints nationwide. The NFL has a growing base of women as fans, and want to make sure we are part of that." But he adds that while women are becoming a larger portion of the NFL fan base (perhaps reflected in the fact that the league now sells team- and league-themed lines of womenswear and apparel), men are buying laundry products more. Tide got a big boost, perhaps inadvertently, with that demographic in February when the detergent got big TV play as the cleanser to rid the Daytona 500 track of spilled fuel after Juan Pablo Montoya's crash. Tide used to sponsor Darrell Waltrip's "Tide Ride," and two years ago sponsored Kevin Harvick in the Camping World Truck Series. But while the Tide target isn't on a car right now, the brand actually made a TV spot this year that aired during race coverage about its success in cleaning up the mess at Daytona. "More men get involved in laundry and caring for household and kids now," says Rama, who pointed out that Tide launched its new Tide Pods products via a sponsorship of this year's Academy Awards. Raman says NASCAR and the NFL share a common tie to Tide. "We were blown away by the number of teams already using Tide, and it was the same with NASCAR, so it's a huge testament to the brand. That's the power of it. The best ideas are ones where we don't have to force something uphill."
A new breeze is blowing in experiential marketing, bearing the delicious intermingling scents of tacos and truck exhaust. That’s because food and beverage marketers are turning to a (relatively) new urban phenomenon -- the taco truck -- to carry their messages to the masses. In the latest iteration, Dos Equis is staging a nationwide promotion around the upcoming Cinco de Mayo holiday using taco trucks. In the “Feast of the Brave,” running from April 25-May 5, Dos Equis is daring consumers to visit the Dos Equis-branded taco trucks to taste “unique” (read: unusual) taco-based dishes and delicacies. In six cities around the U.S. -- Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami -- local chefs are using ingredients not normally found in the diets of American urbanites to create tacos, the eating of which earns the adventuresome soul different amounts of “bravery points.” Ingredients include pig’s ear, chicken gizzard, iguana, alligator, crickets and hog stomach. The city that earns the most “bravery points” wins. In each city the promotion is being carried out with well-known local taco truck operators. The taco truck campaign was pioneered in summer 2010 by Rebel Industries on behalf of Camarena Tequila, which used the mobile eateries to raise awareness for the launch of the new liquor brand. In addition to simply raising Camarena’s profile, the campaign used food to surmount an obstacle associated with introducing a new alcoholic beverage -- no taste tests. To allow consumers to “taste” the new tequila, Rebel Industries recruited well-known local chefs in cities around the country to create dishes incorporating Camarena Tequila. The taco trucks then distributed the food for free. The Camarena-branded taco trucks began in Los Angeles and migrated around the country in 2011, including tours of Miami, New York City, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, and Seattle, often tied into lifestyle events or highlighted with guerrilla street marketing. The Camarena taco truck campaign is continuing in 2012 with a number of new features to keep the experiential marketing program (and tacos) fresh. Josh Levine, CEO of Rebel Industries, explained: “Rebel Industries always takes inspiration from popular culture. With Camarena, we literally used a vehicle -- the taco truck phenomenon -- that consumers were already enthusiastic about to create a unique and interactive consumer experience. We've built upon that success to expand the program nationwide in 2011 and will continue throughout 2012.”
In 1967, Marshall McLuhan, the renowned communication theorist, wrote: “Time has ceased, ‘space’ has vanished. We now live in a global village… a simultaneous happening.” McLuhan wrote this to address the emergence of television broadcast news. Little could he have imagined our current “simultaneous happening.” The current speed of communication reinforces the need for marketers to reach their customers quickly. In this era of instant gratification, marketers are increasingly aware that time to market is the difference between a moment of contact and a missed opportunity. Given this, how can we align global and local interests in a way that captures the attention of local audiences, where they are at that moment, and using the medium they choose? More than ever, global and local marketers need to align their message, approach and brand. The advantages of a centralized marketing approach are well cited: it offers consistent branding and messaging, uniform processes and lower marketing costs. However, this is an individualistic world with high expectations for relevance. Local markets have unique characteristics based on a myriad of factors including purchasing trends, cultural traits, language, climate, political and regulatory environments, and so much more. This calls for a local approach, knowledge of local markets and local marketers who truly understand the context. An effective ‘glocal’ strategy entails a clear vision of both sides of the equation. Beyond translation An effective local reach meets local customers’ demand for relevance by taking into account more than just their language. It is hardly effective to market parkas in New Zealand or sprinklers to Canadians in December (unless, of course, it is an unusually hot winter in Toronto.) Global marketing should embrace the knowledge that local marketers have about their audiences while leveraging existing brand equity. Rather than competing (which is often the case), an effective glocal approach harmonizes the strengths offered by both global and local teams. Ideally, marketing organizations need to distinguish between their messages: generic corporate content and brand identity may be applicable in multiple locales, but campaigns associated with products or services may need a local approach. This entails understanding the markets per region, what buyers prefer, what they buy when, and how they are motivated. Strategic global messaging needs to take into account the local market perspective. Furthermore, local marketers need to operate within the parameters of the global brand, while ensuring that the local marketing message reaches its mark. What about global social media? If anything is a “simultaneous global happening,” it is social media. At any moment, you can read, hear and see the perspectives of individuals around the world, real-time, on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. This doesn’t even include the plethora of local social media. Yet social media is often still an afterthought rather than an integrated part of a global or even local campaign. As global as we are, only 31 percent of internet users are native English speakers, and of non-native speakers, more than 80 percent prefer their native language. Social media needs to have a local presence in the most appropriate language possible and on the local social media platform of choice. By understanding local habits in social media, organizations can substantially build brand value. By comparison, global approaches may have a much more limited reach and effect. Tactical knee-jerk responses must be tempered by strategic choices on a global and local level. Again, this is really about understanding the market and knowing how to communicate with it. Social media is best integrated into other local marketing strategies, which support global brand values while simultaneously enlisting locally appropriate tactics. Looking forward The rise of mobile and tablet marketing will continue to challenge a purely global approach. Location-based services and applications have tremendous potential, since they capture the attention of the customer on the go. Smartphones are now like wallets and keys: a portable necessity that makes the notion of ‘online all the time’ a reality. Location-based offers are not only applicable for small businesses, but also for the local promotion of global brands. To capitalize on this opportunity, mobile advertisers and app providers need to provide a tangible value-add, to avoid becoming simply an irritant.