Every year new car dealers are faced with a summer Catch-22. August is traditionally a peak time for car dealers, when buyers are eager to get their hands on the new 59 registration plates. August is also peak holiday time, when many of those eager buyers are toasting themselves a deep Ferrari Red on some over populated Costa. In order to overcome this problem, dealers seem instinctively driven to hurl a hefty wodge of their annual marketing budget against the (often fruitlessly) wall of tactical advertising. The idea is that, if they hurl enough moolah, some of it is bound to stick and, consequently, some of those buyers, not currently Ferrari toasting, will come to them with open arms – albeit very sore open arms. This is not strategy, this is desperation.

So what is the alternative? Do nothing we said. That’s right, sit on your tush and wait until September. What, you cry, and lose all those eager August buyers to other dealers? We said look, Mr client sir, the eager ‘must have an August plate’ buyers will be banging on your door long before the due August date, so all that expenditure will do is pick up a few waifs and strays – probably not much more than an average month. YOU ARE WASTING YOUR MONEY!

Instead we suggested piling the effort into end of August beginning of September. By then the lobsters will be back from the Costa, turning a nice chestnut brown, chilled and receptive to an informed soft sell and a good deal. So we put together an integrated campaign. Firstly we produced a newsletter ‘Drive’ with a difference – it looked good.

Some people have doubts about the usefulness of a newsletter in today’s marketing mix. If the entire newsletter consists of trying to offload ancient spares, ‘breaking-news-in-depth-features’ on young Jasper’s Advanced NVQ Diploma in ‘Head Gasket Maintenance’ and a few grainy thumbnail snaps of desperate to unload jalopies, that co-incidentally happen to be clogging up the forecourt – then they would be right. However, a well-designed newsletter (with strategic thought behind it) can help to differentiate a product or service from those of competing businesses. But that only holds true if it forms part of an integrated approach – a part, not the whole.

Drive Magazine featured editorial DPS features (with large format photography) all about the benefits of the latest Honda, Mitsubishi and SEAT model ranges. Notice we say benefits, not features. The articles were an appraisal of the economic savings in running costs and taxation (and the environmental benefits) that new models offer over old. Building desire you see. What it didn’t feature were any prices, nothing, not a hint.

Now that their appetites were thoroughly whetted, the newsletter could move in for the kill – it contained an invitation to a Unique Car Event. This event contained an unusual proposal – come to the dealerships, find a new or used car, sit down with JT Hughes staff and make a realistic offer as a start point to negotiation. This had to handled very carefully to avoid the appearance of distress selling – which this most definitely was not. As further incentives, attendees were offered free ‘wash and vacs’ for their cars and those not interested in buying could have a half price MOT during the qualifying period. The idea was to drive traffic to the dealerships and get sales staff talking to customers. We encouraged the client to cross sell – meaning that sales and service staff would be mutually involved in negotiations, so if one side drops the ball, the other has a chance to catch it.

Of course, integration is the key to maintaining customer communication, so we backed Drive Magazine up with a targeted html mailer (worth collecting those email addresses) and finally placed a strategic full-page ad in the local press to target new business.

Did it work? The numbers of time wasters were remarkably small, and once people had seen the cars, and a chance to haggle, a lot of deals were made. Don’t believe us? Well why not ask the client, Paul Tench, Dealer Principle of JT Hughes. “Although Drive Magazine is not designed as a tactical sales tool, the aspirational design and clear advice has gone down better than previous heavy-sell tactical newsletters. In fact we have sold an unprecedented number of vehicles as a direct result and that’s a real achievement in today’s difficult market. We couldn’t be more pleased.”

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