Tag Archives: holden

Corporate Reputation Index: Apple falls, Toyota rises and the banks bite back

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Flying in the face of the apparent turbulence present in the local car manufacturing industry, Toyota was today rated as the most reputable company in the nation according to the 2013 Corporate Reputation Index released by AMR and the Reputation Institute.

Knocking Apple Australia off the number one spot (Apple fell to five), Toyota has peaked in first position for the first time in the Index’s existence. It is quite the achievement for Toyota Australia who announced a $13.2 million loss after tax in June 2011.

Other automotive companies ranked well, with Mazda rising two places to rank 8th this year, Holden 10th and Ford Australia leapfrogging the competition by 12 places to rank 20th overall.

“While there may have been recalls, doubts cast over financial performance, staff layoffs and other issues facing the car industry in Australia, most people admire the fact that the companies are still here, and still operating in the local market,” says AMR’s managing director, Oliver Freedman.

Surprisingly, two of the nation’s big banks, Commonwealth and NAB, both rose significantly in reputation with Commonwealth up 21 places to rank 27th overall, and NAB jetting up the list 16 places to sit at 38th this year.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank was ranked highest of the banks, coming 12th overall.

Westpac dropped six places to 52nd and ANZ fell nine places to rank 58th out of 60 companies measured in 2013.

“For many years, the Australian public have believed all four major banks are ‘the same’ but this year we have seen two – CBA and NAB – really separate themselves from other major players,” says Freedman.

“Interesting to note that these banks have undertaken significant communication programs and there is the perception that they have implemented real improvements in their products and service,” he adds.

Meanwhile Apple Australia’s reputation decline has more to do with how Australians view Apple’s products, its openness and transparency, and financial performance, says Freedman.

“While Apple may have initially differentiated itself in the local marketplace through true innovation, many of its more recent product launches have veered on the edge of novelty; simply updates on existing technology.”

Electronics were strong with JB HI-FI and The Good Guys in the top 10 with Air New Zealand again a surprise at 11 and the improvements in reputation for both Fairfax and News Limited a testament to their move into the digital age.

Reputation index

Australia’s love affair with Qantas continues

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Love may not have been a word used to describe feelings towards Qantas at the end of last year, but the union squabble and consequent grounding of the airline appear to have done nothing to quell Australia’s love affair with the brand.

A study conducted by Square Holes research places Qantas as the fourth ‘most loved’ brand in Australia, up two places since 2010. However, while it remains one of the most loved brands, rival airline Virgin is closing the gap, having broken into the top 10 for the first time to place ninth on the list.

The study, which used focus groups, an online survey of 1,000 Australians and ethnography approaches to arrive at its conclusions, names Apple as the nation’s most loved brand. Cadbury rose up the rankings steeply to come in at second place, while Holden held steady in third spot.

The online survey, which determines the brand ranking by asking participants to nominate their favourite brands without prompting, may be susceptible to sudden changes if certain brands have engaged in particularly memorable or large ad campaigns, making them top of mind during the survey process.

Also in the top 10 of Square Holes’ ‘Make Love Not War’ ranking was Toyota at number five, Sony, which dropped from first place to sixth, Ford at number seven, Samsung at number eight and Coca-Cola at number 10.

Telstra and Optus which appeared in the top ten previously are no longer on the list.

Square Holes Managing Director Jason Dunstone says the most loved brands in Australia share two common traits – authenticity and relevance. “The research found brands with these traits sit most comfortably within the context of Australians’ busy lives and passions,” Dunstone says.

“It’s interesting to note that each of the top ten brands were perceived to have better products than their competitors but their communication, service and advertising are viewed as being the same standard.”

Australians are driven by connection with the people in their lives and new experiences, the research found, leaving less room for aspirational brands. “The top brands are seen by Australians to be supporting them along this path and are brands whose products they use regularly and form part of their daily lives,” Dunstone adds. “No aspirational brands like Aston Martin or Rolex made the list – perhaps a sign of the times.”

The research also found that Australians are most likely to engage with loved brands through their website, closely followed by Facebook. Most people would not engage through Twitter or an app.

However, when it comes to purchasing they move offline and still prefer the personal experience of buying products from the top brands in store, with four in five (78%) expressing this preference  despite growing levels of online shopping.

 

Holden: Commodore brand set for the scrap heap

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Holden will kill off its iconic Commodore brand within five or six years in a move the company hopes will help them stay current, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Tim Lee, president of the company’s international operations in Shanghai, told the newspaper that the Commodore would be replaced by a ‘global’ brand with wider appeal.

“It’s [the Commodore] still an outstanding motor vehicle and one that we intend to produce for a long time,” Mr Lee told the paper.

“But if you look at the motorway here in Melbourne, you see a lot of small cars. You see a lot of more fuel-efficient vehicles on the roads than Commodore.”

Lee acknowledged the Commodore as one of the company’s strongest local sellers over the years, but said the move away from local models in favour of global brands was a key part of parent company General Motors’ strategy for the future.

The announcement will not affect the roll-out of the new-generation Commodore VE, which will be released next year.

Attempts [Ed's note: Exhaustive attempts] to contact Holden to confirm the reports were unsuccessful.

Image credit: Hugo90.

Sponsors flee, boycotts threatened over Sandilands storm

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Advertisers are abandoning Kyle Sandilands’ Austereo shows in droves due to a consumer-led reaction to his attack on a female journalist who criticised he and co-host Jackie O’s television show.

The one-off special, A Night with the Stars, was a flop for Channel 7 and received a panning in the wider media and from viewers online. News.com.au reporter Alison Stephenson’s review of the show branded it a ‘disaster’.

After Sandilands – who is no stranger to controversy – used his morning radio show to launch a spectacularly personal and threatening attack on the journalist, major advertisers began distancing themselves from the Kyle and Jackie O Show, followed by those advertisers pulling their commercial support altogether.

Blackmores is the latest to cancel its commercial arrangement with Austereo, following the lead of Holden, Medibank, Vodafone, The Good Guys and Fantastic Furniture.

Vodafone, a sponsor of the Sandilands-hosted Take40 program, announced through its Twitter account that it would be pulling out due to the reaction of social media users.

Now, a flood of comments on Harvey Norman’s Facebook page is putting pressure on the electrical and furniture chain (which opened its ecommerce site only yesterday) to withdraw its advertising in order to pressure Austereo into taking action against Sandilands.

Sandilands’ told listeners, “Some fat slag on news.com.au has already branded it a disaster. You can tell by reading the article that she just hates us and has always hated us… What a fat bitter thing you are. You’re deputy editor of an online thing. You’ve got a nothing job anyway. You’re a piece of shit… This low thing, Alison Stephenson, deputy editor of news.com.au online. You’re supposed to be impartial, you little troll.

“You’re a bullshit artist, girl. You should be fired from your job. Your hair’s very ’90s. And your blouse. You haven’t got that much titty to be having that low cut a blouse. Watch your mouth or I’ll hunt you down,” he threatened on air.

Consumers are threatening to boycott Harvey Norman, and other advertisers, unless it terminates its association with Sandilands. From Harvey Norman’s Facebook page:

 

Holden wants women to get creative online

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Holden have made social media the centrepiece of its campaign for the launch of its new Barina Spark. 

Targeting young female drivers, the campaign allows users of the new car’s website designerspark.com.au to personalise their own Barina Spark and share it on Facebook. All entries go in the running to win a new Spark car.

Holden have also called on a few famous females to inspire users’ creativity, with media personalities Yumi Stynes, Charlotte Dawson and Emma Freedman, netballer Sharelle McMahon, and others designing their own Barina and video documenting the process.

Holden marketing director Philip Brock said social media was a fitting medium for the new product.

“Barina Spark drivers will be stylish and fashion-savvy,” he says, “and we love the idea of giving women the opportunity to express themselves through their most notable fashion accessory- their car. The competition integrates and utilises Facebook, which provides the perfect mechanism to share each unique design and spread the word about the new Barina spark.”

The social media effort brings to mind the recent ‘Jazz packing’ campaign for Honda Jazz. Earlier this year, DTDigital created a series of light-hearted videos demonstrating the spacious interior of a Honda Jazz. The videos, which directed to a dedicated website with competitions to win a Jazz, rapidly spread virally and racked up close to a million YouTube views.

Honda digital marketing manager Corinne Wilson says it was a successful incursion into digital.

“We’re absolutely thrilled with how it went,” Wilson tells Marketing magazine. 

“The amount of views we had, the amount of entries to the competition we had, and the awareness it raised well and truly exceeded our expectations”

“We wanted to get in touch with a more youthful audience that you don’t usually see being targeted with automotive.”

“We know the importance of the website in the purchase cycle of the vehicle, but also for the brand itself, we’ve got to make sure that if our customers are using social media, we should be too.” 

But Wilson warns that brands shouldn’t get too close to every part of a consumer’s life.

“We don’t want to use it in an interfering way. I don’t think it should be used just for the sake of it, I think social media got our idea across in a way that would not have been as effective with traditional.”

Subaru outperforms other car brands

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Consulting firm, Engaged Marketing, has released results of their 2010 Benchmarking survey which outlines customer experiences for the automotive industry.

A major finding was that Subaru customers are far more likely to recommend Subarus to their friends and colleagues, than other car brand’s customers are to recommend their own car brand.

1,720 car owners were included in the survey and ranked according to their Net Promoter Score which measures the likelihood to recommend. Nine of the biggest car manufacturers in Australia were assessed including Honda, Holden, Subaru, Ford, Mazda, Hyundai, Nissan and Mitsubishi. Three of the nine achieved negative scores based on their customers’ experience.

“Our research shows that for every one negative comment made about a particular car, it takes around five positive referrals to negate that damage. In 2009 the ABS reported over 12 million registered passenger vehicles in Australia. This means there may be as many as 17 million negative comments being made by customers about their car manufacturer every year,” said Chris Roberts, founder and CEO of Engaged Marketing.

“Based on the scores achieved, it seems certain that some car companies in particular have huge potential to grow simply by focusing on improving their customer experiences and value propositions. In the highly competitive car sales industry, achieving a positive customer experience, first time, is more important than ever, concluded Roberts.

A mean campaign

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Background

The Holden Dealer Team (HDT) was a big hit in the 80’s, thanks to its owner and advocate Peter Brock. The cars the company produced are now Australian icons and collectors items worth many thousands of dollars.

Almost 30 years have passed and HDT has been resurrected by friend and fan, Peter Champion. The company is now producing a series of tribute cars to the 80’s classics, modeled on the current VE Commodore, as well as planning a whole new generation of HDT vehicles.

The most recent model is the Blue Meanie – a reinvention of the truly iconic 80’s road beast. Only 250 of these vehicles will be produced. This new product had to be launched to the public, but how?

Brand: Blue Meanie
Client: HDT
Agency: Jack in the box

Objective

The objective was to find a way to achieve mass target market awareness of the new vehicle, within certain budget constraints. The key was to find a way to reach ‘opinion leaders’ within the target market, allowing them to spread the Blue Meanie message to their various social circles.

Strategy

It was agreed that one of the most concentrated occurrences of target market members would be at the Bathurst 1000 race event over the weekend of the 9-11October 2009. HDT negotiated a deal with Super Cheap Auto for a prime position in their marquee at the Bathurst Race weekend. It was here that HDT would unveil their Blue monster. The strategic challenge was in the discovery of a mechanism to attract people to the unveiling and generate continued discussion about the car beyond the event.

The team at Jack in the box devised a launch campaign, with the core concept being a competition to win the first ever test drive in the new Blue Meanie. The target market would enter by completing an online registration form via computer kiosks displayed at the Blue Meanie stand at Bathurst.

Execution

The concept was based on values of exclusivity and prestige – the car was rare and special and only a privileged few would have the opportunity to experience it. The competition was supported by flyers and temporary tattoos mass printed and distributed around the Bathurst crowds. A number of drop and pull-up banners were also produced to display at the Blue Meanie stand. A dedicated Blue Meanie website was developed, designed as the entry point for interested punters, sending them on a journey to HDT’s main site. It was turned live on the morning of Friday 9 September – until then a countdown was the only graphic on screen.

The final campaign piece was a banner advertisement booked in the Sydney Morning Herald for the morning prior to Bathurst, the 9th of October.

In addition, HDT were privileged to have Bev Brock unveil the Blue Meanie and Peter and Bev’s son James also in attendance at the launch.

Results

On Friday 9 October, the Blue Meanie website received 2,169 visits and 15,929 page views, and the average time spent on the site was 4.01 minutes. Of those visitors, an impressive 79% originated from referring sources, such as the Street Commodores forum, Just Commodores forum, Holden Commodore Club and even the Ford Forum. Twitter and Facebook both went crazy over the Blue Meanie, thanks to a few seeds strategically planted by the Jack in the box team.

This is proof of the power of social media and networking within car-enthusiast circles. The Blue Meanie website continues to receive between 100 and 200 visits a day and online discussion is still circulating about the car.

  • HDT received over 600 entries to the test drive competition.
  • All entrants are now subscribed to the HDT database.
  • 40 purchase enquires were lodged via the Blue Meanie and HDT websites, and
  • Three vehicles have been sold (a Blue Meanie can cost $100,000+)

Within budget constraints, HDT were able to target their advertising to a select ‘opinion leader’ market and the use of the competition meant the awareness was continued beyond a single exposure at the event. When the test drive winner is announced, the test drive will be filmed and uploaded to YouTube and online forums, continuing the process and spurring yet another round of online discussion and buzz.

Moments with marketers: Janina Geraghty

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Marketingmag.com.au chats to Janina Geraghty – marketing and web coordinator at the Paul Wakeling Motor Group. If you
would
like to see a certain
marketer profiled, please email your suggestion to Kate Kendall, online
editor, on kate.kendall@niche.com.au.

1. What do you do?

I’m the marketing and web coordinator at the Paul Wakeling Motor Group. The Group incorporates three locations, 12 new and four used car dealerships and three service and parts centres. I report directly to the managing director and my job description includes coordinating advertising, organising events, website maintenance, social media marketing, creating newsletters, direct mail, promotional material, CRM and the list goes on and on.

2. What was your first job?

As soon as I was old enough, I got a part-time job as a ‘check-out chick’ at the local Kmart. My sister got a job at Cut-Price Deli next door and I remember her being furious as she watched me fall asleep at my register while she slaved away slicing, wrapping and cleaning for almost half my wage.

When I left school I hit the big city and got a clerical job at an insurance company. I worked in the insurance industry for most of my career between having babies.

3. What did you study?

I completed my Associateship of the Australian Insurance Institute while I was expecting my first child, did a couple of short courses at TAFE, but it has only been recently that I have become seriously interested in further education. I started a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) degree at UNE last year, studying part-time by distance education. It’s not easy getting back into study, but I’m not putting any unnecessary pressure on myself.

Although I’m enjoying formal study and see the value in it – I’d have to say I’ve learnt a lot looking over people’s shoulders, reading, asking lots of stupid questions and making mistakes.

4. Describe a typical day?

My day starts about half an hour after my alarm has gone off, then its full steam ahead. I get myself and my four school-aged kids ready, stop them from killing each other in the car and deliver them to school (roughly) on time.

After checking the backseat to make sure I haven’t forgotten anyone, I proceed to work.

Once in my office, I check my emails, news, analytics and manufacturer programs over a coffee before tackling whatever the day and inbox brings. A lot of my time is spent online maintaining our sites and accounts on social networks as well as liaising with our advertising agency. There’s always something on the go, whether it be the opening of a new showroom, launch of a new car or our Wakeling’s Women on Wheels program that keeps me occupied.

After work, I go home to dinner my husband has cooked (I don’t like cooking!). We still manage to eat dinner together at the table with no TV as it’s probably the only time we are all together. Following dinner the evenings can vary from watching TV, playing Wii with the kids, studying or hanging out in the kitchen with my husband as well as some housework and preparing for the next day. Naturally I’ll be tweeting in between and usually right up till I go to sleep thanks to my beloved iPhone.

5. What is on the agenda for the next year?

Personally, as well as my studies, I want to write more. I have been doing car reviews for Autochic.com.au, which I have enjoyed immensely and am about to start my own blog.

Professionally I am excited about managing the redevelopment of the group website as well as a few other upcoming projects. Despite the economic climate and negativity in the media, this really is an exciting time for the auto industry.

6. What brand do you love the most? Dislike the most? Why?

Working in a dealership you work with a lot of wonderful big car brands. My favourite brand is Holden. I admire that the brand has entrenched itself in the Australian way of life. Just as you can identify yourself as either a Vegemite or peanut-butter household, regardless of what brand car you own, you are either a Holden or Ford person. The loyalty to the brand here has not wavered despite the troubles of its parent company General Motors in the US and the slowing economy.

The brand I can’t stand at the moment is the Advanced Medical Institute (AMI) and their nasal spray technology. If it weren’t for their tacky prime-time radio ads, I wouldn’t have my six-year-old asking me to explain premature ejaculation!

7. What do you believe has been the most significant moment in the history of marketing?

I believe the current GFC is changing marketing forever. As budgets tighten around the world, no sector is feeling it like marketing and advertising and it has been a huge wake up call to those agencies that have been banking on the co-dependence of business to traditional media. The sudden rush to social media as the cheap alternative to reach customers online has forced companies to re-evaluate strategies and the way they communicate with their audience. They have to start engaging and listening again. The GFC is a cleansing for the industry and reminder of what comes first, the customer.

8. Where can people find you?

Redundancy may not be the answer for retailers

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Latest report from The Australian Centre for Retail Studies (ACRS) shows:

  • Redundancies can cause lasting damage to businesses
  • Direct and indirect costs of redundancy can harm long-term revenue, and
  • Employees more likely to quit jobs in environment of repeated downsizing.

The value of redundancies as a cost cutting measure is queried by the Australian Centre for Retail Studies in a timely report titled Redundancies: A less than optimal strategy?.

The report argues that while many organisations view redundancies as the best way to cut costs, it is particularly difficult to calculate the impact of redundancy on the knowledge drain, plunging employee morale, loss of trust in management, and the voluntary turnover that follows such a move.

“While redundancies may seem like a good way to cut costs in the short-term, the direct and indirect costs of downsizing can paralyse your company’s long-term revenue generating streams,” said Dr Sean Sands, research fellow at the ACRS.

“There are alternatives that can work in favour of the organisation. Companies should consider pay cuts, reduced benefits, unpaid leave or incentives for voluntary departure as an alternative to redundancy,” said Sands.

The effect of redundancy on employee morale is highlighted as a key issue, with the report suggesting that organisations can use the current economic climate as an opportunity to enlist the support of employees as a united force, fostering creativity, generosity and loyalty.

“Difficult times can be used to strengthen a company. If redundancies are required, leaders must become transparent, accept responsibility, over communicate and express compassion and empathy. People want to feel a sense of belonging and control over their future”, said Sands.

The report sites recent measures made by Holden such as changing production arrangements, altering shift allocation and slashing penalties for its workers as a good example of an alternative to redundancy when attempting to cut costs.

Sands believes that successful retailers will continue to provide higher levels of training and engage staff in strategy development.

“A climate of trust works both ways – employees appreciate and respond to empowerment and opportunities to learn and contribute, particularly in hard times.”

The full report can be downloaded from http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/centres/acrs/research/whitepapers/redundancies.pdf.