He says it also works as a lever for the manufacturers: “It allows them to go the network and say, ‘look at how much we have invested in promoting this great new model. Doesn’t it make sense for you to get behind it and follow that big idea?’.”

 

The threat to car advertising from catch-up TV

A modern irritation is viewers recording TV, then fast-forwarding through adverts. Karl Howkins, commercial director at Fiat Group Automobiles UK, described it as “a challenge”.

“Those aged sub-30 tend to watch a lot of on-demand TV on iPlayer, YouTube and the like, so we’re trying to target them with adverts and pop-ups. If you’re a bit older, you do tend to watch more live TV.”

TV advertising of cars is obviously here to stay and is only going to get smarter (see panel, right), but other marketing channels remain popular. Car companies love cinema as they can use a longer edit of a television advert and, because different rules apply, they can show more speed, adult-oriented and risqué content.

 

National vs local advertising

At a retailer level, local media advertising remains popular with some and not others because its impact is impossible to measure. The polar opposite is true of digital media, where every click-through can be logged and analysed.

Pitt explained: “For a car’s spec, customers will go to the national website, but for the customer journey – what’s available near me next week? – that’s where the retailer sites do a lot of the heavy lifting.”

A similar partnership between manufacturer and retailer is also forming with social media. When Facebook and Twitter are used by the dealer to promote some showroom event or special offer, it’s local marketing, but the lines are blurred when the content is being provided nationally or even internationally. Pitt said he’s seeing more examples of that.

“There was a video from BMW Canada about a 1M Coupé doing doughnuts on top of a skyscraper. It had high production values and so UK retailers were linking to it from their own social media.”

Partnership is also the message behind Ford’s recent ‘Tech Live’ initiative. Staged over a single weekend at dealerships across the country, the idea was for sales staff to demonstrate technology on the new Focus and Mondeo.

Anthony Ireson, Ford UK’s marketing director, said his team came up with the wrapper for the event, created the marketing programme around it and did national communications. Local promotion was left to the individual dealers.