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As automakers prepare to roll out battery-run cars, agencies face a whopper of a challenge: how to pitch them to consumers
"It's not saving the environment," groused Rush Limbaugh on The Jay Leno Show last month. The conservative commentator was talking about the electric Ford Focus ST, which he was about to drive for the show's Green Car Challenge segment. (Celebrity guests are tímed racing around an obstacle-laden track behind the sounds tage.) Limbaugh's remark interrupted Leno introducing Ford and noting the benefits the technology has on the environment But for the automaker, dungs worked out in the end: Limbaugh finished his drive and pronounced, "I like the electric car."
Whether Limbaugh relished the ride or just the fact that he ran over Al Gore's cardboard image (one of the obstacles) not once, but twice, he played his part well in a classic marketing tactic to stimulate consumer interest: the good old-fashioned test drive, in this case one broadcast to a national TV authence.
The segment is ua fun way to get the [electric car] story out there in a mainstream way, and it shows that electric vehicles aren't wheezing golf carts," says Toby Barlow, CCO of Ford advertising agency JWT Team Detroit.
The Green Car Challenge is one of the most recent efforts in a nascent advertising category: the all-electric car, a handful of which are currently on the market, and many more of which are being introduced over the next couple of years. New entrants will include Ford's sedan (planned for 2011), General Motor's Chevrolet Volt (2010) and Nissan's Leaf (also planned for 2010). Previously encumbered by battery technology that limited speed and driving range, the electric car market, aided by technical advances, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and heightened consumer concerns over global warming is a segment automakers hope is poised for mass growth.
'You see this enormous momen- tum, an avalanche of activity to bring electric cars to the market," says Darryl Siry, the former CMO of Tesla Motors, which has an electric sports car on the market and has plans to roll out a sedan. Siry has spent the last year advising Coda...