‘Get rid of the loop of pain’: Automotive marketers warned they’re forgetting about the customer
The car purchasing process and automotive marketing have gotten worse over the past five years, global initiatives have gone backwards and a ‘bizarre’ culture has emerged in selling vehicles, the audience at Mumbrella’s Automotive Marketing Summit has been told.
Simon Van Wyk telling automotive marketers what’s gone wrong in the industry
“The forgotten part of car marketing is the customer – and I know that sounds contentious – but it’s 2017 now and the car buying process is actually no different to how it was 30, 40 years ago. It hasn’t changed at all… Actually the process is the same. And we’re all extremely different,” Simon Van Wyk, managing director of MediaDigitalX warned.
“We’re a lot busier [now]. We’ve all got mobile phones. But none of it has changed. It’s actually just as bad now as it was then. You might call your customers ‘guests’ now, but that’s not actually the point.
My boss is a woman and Chinese. She was in a crash, her car was repaired, and she asked me to give her a lift to the panelbeater’s. I did, and to my surprise she asked me to come in with her because she wasn’t confident about dealing with the business on her own. She said she knew nothing about cars apart from how to drive one, and she was an immigrant to boot, so she was afraid they might take advantage of her. I’m no automotive expert either, but I’m a man and an Australian, and to her my mere presence was enough to keep them from trying to put anything over. As it happens, I found the business to be completely honest, but there you are: so long as women don’t know anything about cars, they’ll need a man to keep an eye on things. That’s just how it is.