In a world filled with distractions, where more people consume their news in social media feeds, and take in info at a glance, advertisers — and not just car dealers — will have to find more innovative ways to interrupt their customers to get their attention.
Josh Bloom, Facebook Canada’s Automotive Practice Leader took the stage at this year’s TalkAUTO event, presented by Canadian Black Book and J.D. Power in Toronto, to let the audience of OEMs, dealers and assorted industry suppliers know that, so far, they aren’t doing a very good job with the creative assets they pay to place on social media platforms.
It’s not just the local dealerships that are struggling with content, it’s also big household brands who to do things like convert their high-production (and high cost) TV commercials into versions for digital channels and social media. Most of the time, they just don’t work well, and can in fact hurt the brand.
To his credit, Bloom brought some “show” to his show and tell presentation, and illustrated some examples of really bad campaigns, and really exceptional ones.
The bad videos/ads appear out of place in the environments they are playing in, often have the wrong orientation, and they delay their “aha” brand identification moment until the end of the spot. It’s a rhythm and style we have all grown accustomed to, but that “tried and true” formula just doesn’t work on social and in particular on mobile devices.
Speakers like Bloom and Vaynerchuk, and many others like them, are appearing consistently at dealer events in Canada and the U.S. to help educate dealers about the new digital world order.
That’s partly because your customers and prospects are only giving you milliseconds of their attention, and partly because as much as 85 per cent of Facebook video is watched without sound. So, it’s nice to have great music and a tightly scripted narration, but who exactly is listening to it?
Bloom shared examples of creativity that had been conceived of entirely for a mobile and social platform experience, and they were engaging and clever.
Fighting for a share of that fleeting attention span was also a key focus for social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk during his keynote address at Kijiji’s DealerTalkX event in Toronto.
Vaynerchuk challenged dealers to recognize that the traditional ways of reaching customers just won’t work. He told them they can continue to fight against the digital tidal wave, but they are wrong to do so.
Speakers like Bloom and Vaynerchuk, and many others like them, are appearing consistently at dealer events in Canada and the U.S. to help educate dealers about the new digital world order.
In our world of ever shorter attention spans, where Facebook and Instagram consider a “view” for any video viewed for three seconds or longer, it’s time for dealerships to spend more of their time assessing their digital creative. Is it mobile and social ready?
