Selling Cars: Transparency Helps, Except Toyota

"Stores that fully merchandise their inventory stand out from their competitors, connect with shoppers, and position themselves to win more than their fair share of the deals." — Michael Page, vice president of advertising products, Cars.com

The assessment by Page comes out of an in-depth analysis of Internet merchandising on online shopping behavior presented by Cars.com at the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention & Expo. The study found that cars advertised with multiple photos, descriptive sales copy, and a competitive price capture more consumer interest. How much more?

• Competitive prices received 191 percent more page views and 263 percent more contacts.
• Pages with 11 or more photos received 175 percent more page views and 127 percent more contacts.
• Certified manufacturer logos received 18 percent more views and 34 percent more contacts.

Despite findings that tracked more than 230,000 listings over two years, 7 percent of dealerships list without a price, 13 percent without a photo, and 13 percent with no sales copy. Beyond cars, the study validates that consumers respond better to transparency — they require a more detailed account of the vehicle than if they were shopping for the vehicle in person.

The Cost Of Crisis For Toyota

Of course, none of this counts for Toyota. One survey shows that as many as 27 percent of would-be Toyota car purchasers will longer consider the manufacturer. This is six points lower than the initial recall.

As mentioned last week, Toyota acted too fast in making promises for improvement. Specifically, it hadn't identified more problems across scores of vehicles. Most recently, Toyota recalled 8,000 Tacoma pickups due to possible cracks in a common drive shaft component.

Its recall page now lists 12 models, dating back to as far as 2004. Yet, Toyota continues to run its Super Bowl advertisement that assures consumers that the recall is related to a slip in safety standards in recent days. If recent days is a relevant term, then Toyota's problems may have begun almost 2,000 days ago.

Toyota is also running an aggressive Google campaign, with copy that undermines its own crisis efforts. The Google ad reads "Toyota takes care of its customers Read the FAQs at Toyota.com" despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

There is increasing consumer and expert sentiment that suggests the crisis is becoming unrecoverable despite the recent pledge from Jim Lentz, president and COO of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

On a positive note, the company has adopted one of our suggestions: a top-to-bottom review of every process related to quality in design, production, sales and service. This should have been the direction that Toyota took on day one of the recall. Why the advertising message hasn't aligned itself with the pledge is anybody's guess.

Presenting Content: Fresh Content

If there is a common theme for fresh picks in the first week of February, the theme seemed to be content. Specifically, content needs an assist to find its audience as much communicators need to maintain great content to keep a community.

Given most social media budgets will be increasing this year, it stands to reason the volume of content will grow along with it. What is less understood is whether more communication means more clutter or whether quality content can cut through it.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of February 1

• Five Tips for Aspiring Internet Communicators.
Geoff Livingston presents five lessons with links about being an Internet communicator. His list includes developing great writing skills, subject matter expertise, a passion for creativity, an other-centric world view, and a consistent presence. Within these content areas, Livingston lightly guides people with different skill sets to find their own paths. Cool stuff.

• Content Needs To Get Most Of Your Attention.
While content is important, Valeria Maltoni shares her insights on how it still needs to be part of an overall strategy. The tactics that grew out of her strategy include: lists, surveys, design, generosity, reciprocity, subscriptions, and search engines. But the real lesson here is that while these tactics help gain exposure, it is content that keeps people coming back for more.

• 2010 MarketingSherpa Social Media Marketing Guide.
The post might be more of a teaser for the 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report by MarketingSherpa, but Lee Odden shares some excerpts that make the content valuable on its own. Post highlights include changes in social media budgets and the effectiveness of social media integration. (One content caution: there are models for placing strategy before tactics.)

• CONTENT IS KING! LONG LIVE THE KING!
Content might be king, but presentation matters. To prove his point, Ike Pigott stripped the design normally identified with his blog, effectively communicating more with a simple visual (or lack thereof) than with content alone. Presentation creates a very different experience. The addition of an Iron Chef plating analogy also lends itself to a perfect analogy.

• Twitter Reveals iPad Sentiment.
The intent of fresh content is to feature individuals over collectives, but sometimes content stands on it own. After reading (and hearing) scores of stories about negative iPad sentiment, MarketingProfs published research demonstrating that not all initial online reactions are suitable for long-term consideration. After two hours (and again after four days), iPad sentiment was significantly more positive than initially reported.

Writing For Public Relations: On Writing And Editing

For all the advantages of the Internet, the acceleration of communication, quantity of communication, and format of communication tends to have consequences. The quality of the communication is often diminished.

While the challenge to be a better writer is not new, there does seem to be a growing sense of justification to burp out passionless news releases, let errors stand in social media, and defend made-up details as fact. Sure, we're all human. But what is the real cost of careless editing, writing, and reporting? Sometimes it spills forward.

Writing For Public Relations: On Writing And Editing

View more presentations from Copywrite, Ink..

The presentation above features a portion of my "On Writing And Editing" for the "Writing For Public Relations" course at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In it, you'll find some modern tips and masterful thoughts on writing. Enjoy.

Crafting Reality: Proficiency or Deficiency?

Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute, cited an interesting study that came out of the University of Toronto and the University of California, San Diego, late last year. The study found that while parents say that honesty is the best policy, they lie to their children in order to influence behavior and emotions.

The researchers said they were surprised by how often what they call "parenting by lying" takes place, especially among those who most strongly promote the importance of honesty. I'm not surprised.

In 1996, Bella DePaulo, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Virginia, asked 147 people between the ages of 18 and 71 keep a diary of all the falsehoods they told over the course of a week. They found most people lie as much as twice a day. This did not include mindless pleasantries or polite equivocations such as saying "you're fine" when you're obviously not.

DePaulo's study is consistent with another study on lying conducted around 2004. They asked 30 students to keep track of their social communications for seven days, and those students admitted to lying about 1.6 times per day. The study also concluded people are more likely to lie on the phone, but only marginally so.

And yet, another study on lying from the University of Arizona marked increases in children ages 6-8 and 9-11. The study breaks lying down into four categories: pro-social (protecting someone), self-enhancement (avoid embarrassment), selfish (conceal misdeeds at expense of others), and anti-social (hurting someone intentionally). Other studies, by the way, pinpoint that lying begins around three years of age.

You get the point. People lie all the time. And they are obviously well practiced.

So what can we do about it?

What stood out to me in the post from the Josephson Institute, which develops services and materials to increase ethical competence, were three points (paraphrased below) I found useful as a future teaching model.

• Risk Assessment. Is the benefit worth the risk, especially when the risk includes trust?
• Alternative Action. Can you accomplish a goal another way, knowing that necessity isn’t fact but interpretation?
• Long-term Consequences. Have you fully considered the consequences, especially if it puts others at risk or if it is exposed several months or years later.

The reason this list is such an excellent teaching tool is that communicators are sometimes asked to lie for the organizations they serve. My advice, consistently, is not to do it. However, that sometimes leaves students at a loss of how to approach the subject.

The first step in confronting a lie.

Ethics suggest that when communicators become privy to mistruths, they address it with the responsible party first. This allows the responsible party an opportunity to correct it before turning to a higher authority. The imperative becomes helping the responsible party consider several points, much like those laid out by the Josephson Institute.

Long-term consequences tend to be the most overlooked. Cutting corners to meet production demands at the expense of safety might not be noticeable until someone is injured. Padding departmental budget expenses over the course of several years can result in layoffs when the organization faces hard times. Attempting to be noble by padding scores in an awards contest may reinforce the winner's belief that inferior work is acceptable.

Whatever the case, long-term consequences are not always known when people attempt to change perception.

Interestingly enough, fear and narcissism tend to be the driving justifiers for lies. People who lie are afraid of the truth or, in some cases, believe that their direct manipulation of facts are necessary to produce a specific outcome. When you think about it, those traits are also why parents who place a honesty in high regard still lie to their children in order to change behavior.

In closing, I might add that objective assessment and effective communication on the front end is a remedy as well.

For instance, Gail Heyman, professor of psychology at UC San Diego, said telling a 2-year-old that you don't like their drawing is cruel. Therefore, such a pro-social lie is seen as somewhat justifiable.

However, it seems to me that in such a case the error isn't the drawing as much as it assessment of the drawing (considering the artist is two years old) or the inability to communicate effectively, such as offering ways to improve the picture. This way, the parent won't hurt the child's self-esteem but won't enable them either. In other words, choose your words carefully.

Passing For Creative: Butterfinger

There are three ways to look at a brand new Butterfinger television commercial, which will begin to air nationally on Feb. 15 and continue through the third quarter: the celebration of consumer generated creative; the hyperbole of hype and hopeful publicity; or the gradual decline of advertising as we know it.

The celebration of consumer generated creative.

For the cost of $28, David Markus, a graduate of the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, won $25,000 and a one-year supply of Butterfinger candy bars. His spot is a mostly well-framed, cute, mildly funny iPhone app cliche. We don't want to take away from his win whatsoever. Congratulations.

Customers can be creative. And sometimes they might surprise you, like fans of the television show Jericho, who out-marketed the CBS marketing team. Butterfinger was surprised too. It received 600 entries. Some, like this one or this one, aren't bad. Some are, but you can find those on your own.

The hyperbole of hype and hopeful publicity.

A few decent spots aside, the Butterfinger contest doesn't seem to be the success the company thought it would be.

Of those 600 entries, Markus racked up 11,000 views on YouTube, which is far away ahead of the pack, including the contest promo. Most videos averaged about 100 views. On the Facebook/Yahoo video, views are higher with about 3,000 views as the average, which still seems low given the page has about 480,000 fans.

Yet, to read the release, you would think the contest was entered by everyone on the planet. It's loaded with buzz words, such as allowing "fans to take control of the brand and express themselves in a very real way." Six hundred, anyway.

"This approach essentially allowed consumers to talk to each other about the brand they love," said Daniel Jhung, Butterfinger marketing manager. "As a result, we got hundreds of new ideas with a wide range of creative interpretation and depth. The content laboratory is getting bigger and bigger." Maybe.

The gradual decline of advertising as we know it.

Again, this isn't meant to detract from any of Butterfinger's consumer generated marketing. I tend to be a fan of the general concept, and have managed a few in one form or another. But in reviewing the ads, even the decent ones, it seems to strike at the perception of what the general public thinks advertising is as opposed to what it can be.

Sure, there are plenty of creative spots produced by agencies every year (we saw a handful during the Super Bowl), the concept of what makes advertising great is in steady decline. Even at some top ad shops, divergent thinking has somehow morphed into tossing spaghetti and hoping it sticks to the wall.

Great advertising is hardly coming up with something witty or mildly funny or bizarre and tagging a three-second product shot at the end. It's hard work.

It requires someone who can maximize creativity within the least creative of confines and still manage to produce something that connects with people in such a way that not only do they identify with the communication, recognize it as a conversation about what they were thinking anyway, and feel motivated enough to think about it, find out more about it, and maybe even go out and buy it.

And therein might be why the Butterfinger contest seems one off from a real success story. A limited pool of people picked an advertisement they liked best. But what people "like" and what actually works outside of the context of a consumer contest is something else.

And for students hoping to someday pursue the profession as a career, they might keep that in mind before adding to the pile of spots that leave people saying "I could write that ad" as opposed to "I wish I wrote that ad."

Managing Crisis: Silence vs. Social

"We are not eliminating any medical benefits," Rob Stillwell, spokesman for NV Energy, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "That's all I can say on the record."

There is a reason NV Energy cannot discuss its decision to place a cap on contributions to employees' retiree medical plans: textbook public relations. Regulated companies are almost always silent in the midst of union contract negotiations.

Unions are not.

Some 200 union workers rallied in the rain yesterday to protest planned reduced health care benefits for NV Energy retirees and cutbacks in the utility company's work force. But the traditional pickets are only one piece of the union's communication program. IBEW Local 1245 has launched a Web site and a Facebook page, aptly titled Shame On NV Energy.

Paid advertisements help drive traffic to the site. Banners were placed on the The New York Times several days ago. It seems the communication is aimed at would-be investors considering the company after it reported a profit, credited to a 6.1 percent increase in Southern Nevada's general rates. Even without the rate hike, NV Energy was already delivering the most expensive energy in the mountain states.

The union also seems especially irritated by the changes in retiree compensation plans because it was hopeful that NV Energy would be investing in a new transmission line and receiving $138 million in stimulus funds, which Senator Harry Reid claims as a feather in his cap. Instead, the union was surprised by a planned cut in retiree health benefits and the closure of offices in Las Vegas, Elko, Yerington and Carson City.

The cuts are likely a consequence of NV Energy's planned move into renewable energy. In its most recent Integrated Resource Plan approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, NV Energy will be spending approximately $2 billion to purchase and invest in new renewable energy by 2015. The emphasis is on solar, wind, and geothermal.

Recent announcements in its moves toward renewable energy all but drown out the union protest. However, that does not mean the complaints are falling on deaf ears. Since Monday, the Facebook account has tripled as consumers, concerned about energy prices, join the retirees. Like many utilities, the answer is never to reduce rates but to reduce consumption, they say.

There is also speculation over the resignation of the company’s chief financial officer and treasurer just days before what would otherwise be good news. Speculation is commonplace, given the timing and lack of any specific reason.

The story raises several interesting questions about social media and the current state of media. One of the most pressing has less to do with message management and more to do with message control, which social media is often credited in rectifying. However, in this case study, it seems social media makes communication a crapshoot.

The success of IBEW communication relies on nothing more than drawing attention to the topic. The success of NV Energy communication seems much more to do with talking more about everything else, as there is no mention of cuts on its Web site or toe test on Twitter.