Article

Brand appeal in the auto showroom

Digital signage is a powerful tool for car dealers.

November 20, 2007

Editor's note: This story is excerpted from "Automotive Sales: How to Rev Them Up with Digital Signage."

When it comes to automobile dealerships, reputation isn't just important. It's everything.Dealerships live and die by their reputations. If a customer has a good experience at a dealership, he might mention it to a friend, but a bad experience likely will be broadcast to every human soul within a 50-mile radius. It's unfortunate, but as we all know, it's just human nature.

That's where branding comes in. For the purposes of this story, we'll define "branding" as the overall impression customers get when they walk into your dealership. What sticks with them? What do they remember? What emotions will rise to the surface the next time they hear your slogan or see your logo?

"Branding is your strongest tool," said Don Lenehan, senior vice president of marketing, alliances and content services, Symon Communications. "More than any ad you could ever run or any message you could put out in the newspaper, TV or radio, your strongest branding tool is going to be the experience when someone comes into the dealership. What are your people like? What does the dealership look like? So anything you can do to enhance that — like a digital signage network would — helps you build your brand."

When it comes to the overall look and feel of a dealership, experts say digital signage says a lot. Slick, clean, shiny displays brightly portraying information — and not just any information, but information consumers need — screams professionalism. It speaks to the dealership's taste, its resources, its pride in its reputation and its commitment to customer satisfaction. If customers feel like they're stepping into a dealership of the future — perhaps the sort of facility George Jetson might frequent — they'll recognize your dealership as one that is ahead of the rest.

"I think it typically says that this is a progressive, leading-edge company that I'm dealing with," said Kristi Kinney, creative team leader for 3M Digital Signage. "I think it denotes and feels like high quality. These are just impressions that I think people get. I think that those sorts of impressions reflect well on any brand."

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A history lesson

But branding means more than just flashy displays. It's about finding ways to make the customer bond with your dealership. We've all seen this kind of bonding before. It appears in the elderly grandfather who insists on driving for more than an hour — twice a month — to the same barber shop he's been a patron of since he was a little boy.

It's not that it's an easy trip. In many cases, it's probably not because he gets a better haircut. It's because it's where he's always gone. He's grown up there. He knows the staff and the other customers. In many ways, it's a part of his history and he cherishes the history of the place.

That's the kind of emotional attachment you want to generate for your dealership. Digital signage can help you do that. How? By telling your story.

"What you really want to do, from a manufacturer's standpoint, is educate them on the history of that product," said Scott Werlein, creative director of Spinitar. "A lot of manufacturers out there have been around for 20, 50 or 100 years. They have rich histories that most customers are not educated about. I think that if they can learn that history, they'll have emotional connection to the brand. That's really what you're looking for — that emotional connection to the brand — because that will keep them coming back again and again."

He cites the corporate history of Mercedes-Benz as an example.

"A lot of people did not realize that, in the early '70s, Mercedes-Benz created and patented the airbag," Werlein said. "Well, instead of keeping that to themselves, they released it to all other manufacturers so that they could put airbags in their cars."

Werlein says this type of information is not trivial. It can help build the consumer's confidence, trust — even pride in — the brand. When they learn that Mercedes-Benz executives were willing to put the public's safety above their own pocketbooks, they'll come to associate Mercedes-Benz with good values. This, in turn, will cause them to feel like they're supporting good values simply by purchasing the company's vehicles.

Dealerships with rich histories also can tell their own stories. When did the dealership first open its doors? Who started it? What kinds of cars were being sold them? This information can help your prospective customers form the connection you need.

Community service counts

Establishing your history is important, but you also want to spotlight the things your dealership is doing right now. How is your dealership giving back to the community? Are you sponsoring a little league team? Display some images of the team in action every 10 minutes. Has anyone on your sales team taken part in a walk-a-thon for charity recently? Shoot a brief 20-second testimonial of that salesperson explaining how it felt to help the cause and show your customers your sales team is interested in more than just making a fast buck.

Don Plekenpol, automotive solutions consultant for Symon Communications, recalls the positive reaction one of his client dealerships received when it used digital signage to advertise a 10-percent discount for all firefighters and police officers.

"They have seen a market increase," Plekenpol said of the dealership. "They're now picking up the fire department and all the fire departments in a neighboring town that's seven miles away from their dealership — and this is an area that has a dealership every five miles. All of the firemen are now bringing their cars over to this dealer for service. As a result, they've sold a couple of used cars to these firemen as well as new cars, so they'll never take the stuff out. That one little advertisement has brought them more money than their digital signage system has cost them for four years!"

The driving experience

Now we come to what is likely the most important way in which digital signage can support your branding: by conveying the driving experience — specifically the experience of driving the vehicles on yourlot.

What exactly do we mean by "the driving experience"? Lenehan describes it with relish.

"It's the whole thing of a brand-new car," he said. "It's the smell, it's the feel, it's how clean and perfect the vehicle is at that point. Ideally, you picked it because you liked the performance, you liked the look, you liked the color and you liked the leather inside. It's like you've just purchased a new baby, practically."

The smell. The feel. The look. These are powerful sensory inputs that we experience every day. A flat-panel, high-definition digital signage display can portray the driving experience far more vibrantly and palpably than a two-dimensional poster or a newspaper ad ever could.

"On the digital signage — the large-format displays — we see content that features a lot of motion and very clearly communicates the driving experience for that brand, be it BMW or Lexus or the like," said Mike Abbott, vice president of ADFLOW Networks. "It's content that's short and snappy, typically. It's content that is simple that doesn't try to convey too complex a message to the customer."

Kevin Lawrence, director of sales at Helius Incorporated, says this type of full-motion video can be a powerful intoxicant when a customer is considering a new-car purchase.

"There is going to be a time in the sales process when the customer is going to be left unattended," Lawrence said. "The salesman is going to go off and get additional information or to discuss the agreeable terms of the deal. What you don't want the customer to do is sit there and contemplate the financial considerations of the purchase. What you want them to do is look out onto the floor and see that beautiful new car that they're about to purchase driving across the countryside or driving over that rugged terrain or whatever is appropriate. Now their attention is diverted to something that is apart from the actual transaction aspect of the purchase. That is one of the greatest powers of digital signage."