What Little I Know…

Nissan is said to be heavily promoting their Sentra and Altima cars, via Xbox. The approach was derived, with the late Generation X male as the target.

Both the Sentra and Altima featured models will have a dominate presence in the game ‘Forza Motorsport 2’ and its marketing. Nissan and Xbox will also be hosting a series of events through to the fall, further spreading the hype on both the game and the featured vehicles.

So far, results for the game show that:

• More than a million copies of the game have been sold
• The average user is spending 100 hours on the game
• The primary demographic of game owners are male, in their mid-20’s and have an average house hold income of $58,000

This type of creative brand advertising shows that large, traditional, newspaper advertisers are, either themselves or through a hired agency, thinking out of the box when it comes to spending their dollars.

A sure fire way to get your publishing media source to stay top of mind, with dealer principals and or at the OEM level, is to tailor your advertising spots and packages, to better fit their needs. Don’t run to the banner, skyscraper solution as your ‘drive thru’ approach. Advertisers with a greater vested brand and product are willing to pay for ideas that are different and challenge the norm, while still showing benefit on how to reach the desired consumer.

If I can leave you with more food for thought, I will leave you with this excerpt from a Kubas report entitled ‘How the Big Money Sees Newspaper Advertising’. This graph tells a very compelling, yet encouraging story. It shows that our form of media (print, magazines and their affinity sites) is in need of a consultative selling shake-up (challenge the norm) and we need it fast, while advertisers are still spending with us.

Challenge your sales teams: have them segment their automotive client lists by historical propensity to buy. Tailor a multi-media advertising package that suits their needs. Do not be afraid to introduce micro-campaigns that target the different models on their lot. Because you are suggesting a group of campaigns for a single client, you will have greater price flexibility and have no issue in attaining the incremental revenue, through your new collective, multi-media advertising solution.