Jeep marketer Mark McCraith: Television beats social media at generating car sales

Don’t worry Macca the Internet will go away soon enough …

Whenever I read articles like this I always get the feeling these people feel very threatened by the Internet and the vast changes that are starting to happen.

Or maybe TV works. Now how about that

Wow. Sounds a lot like “children should be seen but not heard” only for business it’s “customers should be paying and then take a hike.”

I guess that’s why a disgruntle customer felt the need to crowdfund a $40K destruction of his Jeep, garnering the funds and worldwide support via social media.

Because screw it, right? They got the sale, so why should they give a crap about sustaining the relationship?

That’s weird. We represent dealerships and can absolutely claim sales directly from our Facebook campaigns….maybe people just don’t want Jeeps?

I know at least 2 people who bought a Jeep within the last 2 months who were influenced by social media.

Why they bought I jeep I will never know…. (see above comment).

I know Mark well. He’s not ‘opposed’ to the internet, social media, or any other sort of media; he’s simply saying from his experience social media hasn’t proved any help in selling cars. And before you scream ‘bull*#@t!’, remember, Jeep uses the most sophisticated analytics of any car company I’ve ever seen. Remember, Mark isn’t just another marketer talking here, he’s been the CEO of a major media company himself and lately, someone who’s been part of one of the most successful sales success in the last 10 years. In my book, that’s someone worth listening to.

People are not in love with brands.People love television.

More people watch television than ‘talk with brands’ via social media.

People who use social media want to talk with each other. Not with brands. Not with ads. And not with your or me.

Does he know what a sales funnel is?

Because of ineptitude of people like this Exec… Didn’t buy a Jeep.

In all seriousness, it might just be that as industries and creative outputs/use of data… we aren’t there yet.

Some companies are getting there… Let’s take Kia and their tie-in with Tennis. Great use of social media integration with apps and social campaign (not to mention brand tie-in with Aus open and that associated social campaign).

Result… Kia at top of consideration set (and I’m not even looking for a car for a few years).

Remember a few things the world would ‘never adopt’:
– Motor vehicles (claimed late 19th century)
– Personal computers (claimed mid 20th century)
– The internet (claimed late 20th century)
– Social media (claimed early 21st century).

Whoops… Looking at the emergence of technology and it’s subsequent adoption by global citizens, it’s pretty safe to assume social media will further become a dominant platform for driving brand awareness and sales conversion.

To just leap forward a bit now… I don’t think we are that for off when making small or significant purchase decisions (and transactions) will become a Virtual Reality (VR) experience that can be done at home in your lounge room… Or even an Augmented Reality (AR) experience out ‘in the field’ (ie next gen Google Glass, etc)… Items can be customised, talk to experts, product reviews, get user feedback, bargain with multiple retailers (all simultaneously)… with further development of ‘open’ databases and tools to analyse the data, social media is going to become very valuable turf.

With car sales, after market sales/work, brand loyalty campaigns… Aggregate data of sales, offers posted on social media might develop price points; user feedback could deveop an augmented ‘safety rating’ to the industry ANSCAP rating; servicing and car reliability of vehicle could develop into a ‘lifetime expectancy’ and satisfaction rating.

Crowd-sourced information is the future and dinosaurs would do well to learn how to tweet to their buddies that a global ash cloud is coming to get their traditional media…

Well somebody has to hold back progress, it’s getting out of hand isn’t it?

No-on is disputing that TV can be effective, but if you think it is as effective and efficient as it used to be then you’re delusional. And if you think it will continue to be as effective and efficient, you will waste a lot of money over the next few years.

Just another dinosaur who didn’t see the asteroid coming.

I’m with Mark. I’ve never bought a Jeep, or indeed anything else because of social media.

Dear Birdman,
You may well be right – television mightn’t be effective and efficient as it used to be – but as the ex-CEO of a media company, I think Mark knows when it’s still as effective and efficient as it needs to be for Jeep/Chrysler.

Mark, you may never have sold a car through social media, but how many sales have you lost because of social media? Unfortunately loud social media experts cloud the conversation and I share a distaste for what they often dish up, but there are effective ways to utilize some platforms.

And can we please stop thinking of social media as being solely about people’s chatter, when in actual fact some of the social platforms are superb for PAID brand building. Happy to share the data for anyone that wants it.

Either Mark’s people/agencies are very bad at marketing/communicating on social media – or they are very bad explaining the impact their efforts are having on sales.

“Mark McCraith may possibly have not sold one car on social media, but he has possibly unsold one.” Is this what you call ‘unsold’? http://www.destroymyjeep.com/ lol

Yet the crowd funded “Destroy my Jeep” was all over social media. Its a fact of life in 2015 if you are not active on Web 2.0 and got your head in the sand, then you are at risk for frustrated customers and stakeholders to mobilise on it and use it against you.

Get with the program Jeep,before a angry mob “Don’t Hold Back” in trashing your reputation before its too late. (If they haven’t done so already).

I got one because I saw Buddy Franklin Mrs had one on Instagram and it looks tough as

Seems to be a lot of people here protesting a bit too much. A client has the temerity to call it as he sees it and he’s immediately labelled as a luddite. There a lot of people on both client and agency side who would quietly agree with at least part of his views, but who keep their heads down for this reason. Everyone’s poorer for the lack of open debate (except for social media ‘experts’). It’s surprising how little adland reference there is to the numerous studies telling us most people don’t want to have conversations with brands. They mainly just want stuff from them. As Mark said, what we now have is lots of different ways to show moving pictures. Including Facebook which is fast becoming simply another paid channel, and a good one at that. Yes, there are some categories where ratings and reviews will play a critical role. But from Mark’s comments its seems that even in high involvement categories like cars there are a lot of people who make their decisions emotionally and without that much thought. Or has every car advertiser in the world got it wrong?

I agree Peter Bray. What’s more, it’s different horses for different courses. Car people are seriously all about units. And maybe there are more direct channels for them to achieve results. At least the guy was being honest, and he my be pleasantly surprised by the (negative) feedback from all the people who don’t know car brands.

Social media doesn’t sell cars. Cars sell Cars and good old fashioned Television and Radio create powerfull brands and evoke emotion and desire. Don’t shoot this guy down just for telling the truth, and god knows we need more truth when it comes to the often useless results SM gives us. It’s fine for brand reinforcement but it not a driver of car sales.

There is millions of bucks being thrown at Social Media every month for 0 results, Until he SM industry cleans the smokey glass you concentrate on Offline media as the primary goal with a dose of online directional media to underpin the process.

What platforms is he using? What targeting is he using? What ad units is he using? How is he measuring? What does he think of the data around the decline of TV viewing and the time spent on ‘social’ platforms? Perhaps his first mistake is treating them as a ‘socia’l platform.

i suspect that some of these outraged comments are from self-styled “social media gurus” and “customer engagement consultants” and “brand awareness advocates”

comment 22, 3rd speaker is exactly right

Hey Nathan, who do YOU work for?

Yep, you’re right McCraith, Social Media is totally ineffective.
No one would ever use it, stick to TV mate.
Lots of Love, Ashton
Destroy My Jeep . com

MIGHT NOT OF SOLD A JEEP ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUT LOST COUNTLESS SALES FROM THE SOCIAL MEDIA. YOUR LACK OF CARING ABOUT YOUR FAULTY LEMONS

I agree with his comments, social is a great channel for some brands but if you are not in the entertainment game it’s hard to make it work for your brand.

As for those JUMPING up and down about how effective social media is I bet you still use bull$hit metrics like “post engagement” “fan growth” & the age old “post impression” data which all try to show some value for what you are doing and justify retainers/salary however generally these metrics add zero value to clients and have NO correlation to business or brand metrics.

Don’t get me wrong social can drive leads (low converting and generally low volumes) and most brands have to be there to service customers but at the moment it’s highly overrated!

I loved the funnel comment.

When you only measure the bottom of the funnel, of course online and social media work.

But who do you think is filling the tunnel and getting those consumers to the bottom of it?

If you only measure a microcosm you will find it gets the credit for everything. It’s called misattribution.

love the fact so many of you are talking about ” I bought a jeep” and “don’t hold back “.Where did you see/ hear these ??? primarily on good ole TV , not social ….

Your right. I never bought a Jeep because of social media. But I did by a BMW! #lovebmwonfacebook!

Social is a good channel for some service and retail industries but if you are not in the retail or entertainment game it’s near impossible to make it work. SM uses assessments like “likes” “post engagement” “fan growth” and the old “post impression” data which all try to justify some value to justify retainers/salary however but these metrics add no value to clients and have no relationship to business or brand metrics. Social can drive leads but they are low converting and generally low volumes. Brands do use social to service customers but at the moment it’s just an add on.

In the last five years, Fiat/Jeep have went from selling 8,000 cars to 40,000 cars a year so their dinosaur-esque strategy is quite effective.

Keen to hear some examples of social delivering such tangible growth.

Fiat groups performance in recent times may only go to showing how ineffective its Marketing was more than 2 years ago. Either that, or they didn’t make the same investment in marketing as they do now ie there has been a concerted push to increase investment to drive sales. Less challenging to make a large gain off a small base.

I agree with others that social media should be part of the mix.

Curse you Fraser for valuing facts over sentiment!

Jeep Australia has 149,000 Australians who have chosen to follow their Facebook page. Curious his thoughts on that and the mighty funnel?

As Winston Churchill said

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”.

I am reminded of this whenever the social media peeps stick their heads up like a bunch of meerkats.

I also remember being abused and told I was a dinosaur because
1) I didnt want a presence on second life
2) I wanted to focus on good HTML rather than building an iPad app.
3) I wasn’t going to give my content to facebook. For free.

If I was cynical, it would seem to me that there is an entire industry being built around telling everyone around you “you are stupid”.

I am sure that if I gave these guys lots of money to build my second life presence I wouldn’t be stupid anymore. Right?

Companies like Compare the Market and iSelect where built on old fashioned TV and Radio, social was an afterthought and a diversion from the main game … building the brand thats what drives interest and engagement and ultimately sales

YouTube engages more eyeballs, per week, in Australia than Free to air and certainly more than Foxtel. Plus, if the user skips the advertiser doesn’t pay. How can the expensive TV middle man compete with the new school? Well, looking at Ten’s earnings report for Q1; they can’t.

Marketing is about a mix. As the audience moves away from traditional television, surely the price must come down for advertisers. Tough for the channels because they have very fat processes and many ‘offices’ where exec’s like to sit.

The next 5 years will be very fast and will deliver further losses for TV networks.

I have certainly never thought about buying something because of facebook or twitter. Discussion forums on the on the other hand, and youtube reviews, for example, because they contain more detail, are influential to me. But things like facebook likes etc count for nothing in my book.

Very interesting assertion that “YouTube engages more eyeballs, per week, in Australia than Free to air”.

Given that FTA weekly reach is 86% of the population (most recent 4 weeks average), and that 86% of Australia’s 23.8m people is 20.5m people, I could have sworn that number was bigger than Youtube’s MONTHLY audience reach of 10.065m as reported in Nielsen’s December 14 Online Landscape Report.

Further, Time Per Person for Youtube for the month of Dec 14 was 5h 3m 7s. The average person in Australia views a little over 3 hrs a day. Sure only 80% or so is FTA, but in less than half a week, FTA has Youtube covered for the month!

Love a good ol short sighted media dinosaur. Though I am in complete agreeance that TV has a role, but so does digital media and social media too. In fact I actually did buy a Jeep and I dont even watch TV!

@@”Yet the crowd funded “Destroy my Jeep” was all over social media.”

Heh. And where did you hear about it ?

On “The Check- Out”. On TELEVISION !

@Drinking the call aid alert.

So based on a handful of ‘special boxes’ plugged into a handful of tv’s, (these tv’s are in households who actively watch television too…); 80% of Australia’s population are watching adverts on traditional television…!?
– ABC doesn’t have any adverts??? Am I missing something here?

Who is seeing the adverts v making a cup of tea or flicking in between channels? For the cost of these TVC’s, where is the proven, transactional gains for the client v digital?

Until digital television’s audience engagement is calculated to the click, (like it is on models, like YouTube), I guess, it will remain assumptive, like it always has been…?
– Are there plans to make it totally accountable?

One fact that stands is: Traditional television revenues are tanking. I wonder why that is……..?

I am not saying that television does not have a value. I am saying that clients paying top $’s for ad’s on TV stations today, should be very serious about how this push is being tracked and accounted for in their analytic’s.

#46 Calculated to the click eh? So if those clicks are robotic and happen 10 to the second you are happy with that?

One of the great lies of the digital age is that clicks are the bees knees.

We used to calculate the online audience using clicks. You know what happened. The “monthly unique browsers” got to 133m before the digital publishers realised that clicks are next to useless to assess audience.

That is not to say they don’t have a use to assess traffic – that you have to remove bots, crawlers, spiders, multiple frames etc from. But traffic audience.

wow – more straw polls going on here than at a B&S Ball…

Don’t see how this is an either/or debate, isn’t it all about business objectives???

Media in reality is a supply position to a demand based problem, how many people do you want to buy your product AND then what are their motivating factors.

Many times what others think of their purchase is quite important to them and is a strong motivating factor. QED placing that message on a mass medium adds that value, then add contextual relevance and get closer to another step in the funnel you add other mediums where your core target hangs out. Clearly digital and social would be in that mix quite often.

I agree with the Jeep guy, he probably hasn’t sold a Jeep off social……yet.

@#47 I am hearing you.

You cannot deny though that traditional television is tanking. Audiences are drying up and therefore costs should be reduced for the client as they spend elsewhere.

@#47 I am hearing you.

You cannot deny though, that traditional television is tanking. Audiences are drying up and therefore costs should be reduced for the client as they spend elsewhere.

#49.

It depends on what you mean by ‘television’. If you mean the aggregate of all the FTA primary and secondary channels, all the subscription TV channels, the OTT services and the PVR time-shifted viewing … well then no it pretty stable.

If you mean individual programmes … then yes.

But that is a result of fragmentation due to greater choice.

And yes that has to be reflected in the advertising rates ongoing. Primary channel rates down, secondary channel rates plug the hole.