Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2017 | |

Ford Uses Competitors’ Showroom As Ford’s Sales Arm

Advertiser: SIME DARBY AUTO CONNEXION
Brand: Ford
Creative Agency: -
Credits: -

The Challenge
Ford had launched its biggest year end promo. However, the segment is extremely competitive with other competitors having deep pockets to advertise extensively, it was extremely difficult to generate impact with the sales promo. Ford needed a strategic plan to ensure they maximized the potential sales from their promo.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
Research shows that while car buyers research a lot before test drives, right before purchase, factors like promos and rebates have the highest influence on their decisions. With these insights, Media Agency recommended Ford to selectively pin and target competitors’ showroom location nationwide creating disruption on their potential buyers’ decision. A dealer hijack campaign was conceived focusing on bottom funnel of interested car buyers, rather than competing with deep-pocketed competitors at the upper funnel awareness stage.

Media Execution
With the data of competitors’ locations and users’ test drive behavior, we disrupt their choice and decision by serving Ford’s year end promo. A dual approach was adopted- Tell and Sell. We smartly pinned all 400 competitor’s location to target prospective car buyers. On weekdays, our key focus was just to create awareness as the first later of interaction. During the peak test drive hours e.g. weekends, the Sell tactic was deployed with precise location targeted mobile advertising. This is the time when we disrupt our competitor’s potential buyers. These interested car buyers visiting competitor showrooms, were served strategic Ford promos on their mobile which created dissonance and drove the buyers to explore Ford as an option at their point of purchase.

Results and Effectiveness
The dealer hijack strategy was very successful in moving footfalls from 6 main competitor’s 400 showrooms to Ford’s showroom. Ford’s December sales over achieved its sales KPI by 163%. Thus by leveraging on competitors’ spends, Ford drove its own sales through the roof.