Introducing the All-New "Doug" to Yahoo! Mail Users

I really like the ad unit Yahoo! started last year on their Yahoo! Mail website where a company can purchase the entire login page's background. It has a crisp, generous look and the ad never gets lost in the typical clutter of ad banners, typical of other Yahoo! web properties. Today Ford decided to run a full page unit for the Ford Focus. Or did they? It seems like that was the plan until someone, or is it some thing, decided to takeover the promoting of the all-new Ford Focus.

That "thing" if you haven't heard of it by now is Doug, Ford's Spokespuppet. And yes, "spokespuppet" is not a real word; instead, it is a whole new concept in automotive marketing lingo. Doug and his human sidekick John are bringing some humorous snark to the launch of the Focus. It's almost a little sad that the focus (pun intended) here is an orange puppet when Ford has an amazing new re-introduction of the Focus, having finally brought over to the States the European model that many have been asking for for years.

Back to Yahoo!

Ford's ad unit brought significant awareness not to the car (well indirectly it did), but to a puppet. All of the calls-to-action for the ad unit go to Doug's Facebook Fan page where one can "Like me. Love was not an option." Not one link goes to the Ford Focus website to learn about the car.

It's an interesting decision and perhaps a wise one as one website put it, "Ford Profit Fueled in Part by Social Media".

I can't think of any situation in the almost 4 years I've been writing this blog where a major ad buy from a car company drove entirely to a puppet on Facebook. Sorry, "spokespuppet."

Toyota Marketing Goes on Defensive to Disprove "Expert"

It's one thing to issue a press release or respond publicly to criticism about your company; it's a whole other thing to start advertising your response to a crisis. Let's call this Crisis Marketing, my borrowing a phrase common from Public Relations - Crisis Management.

If you don't know about Toyota's massive, very public recall situation than you are not paying attention. Toyota is suffering a barrage of recalls affecting several vehicles. One of the more damaging recalls is the sudden acceleration issue many consumers are saying they are suffering.

This is all very reminiscent of a similar situation Audi went through back in the 1986. I had a neighbor with a beautiful Audi 5000 that was parked on a descending driveway that we all thought was sure to suddenly accelerate and plow into his garage door, at least that was what we 14 year-old kids wanted to see, but it never happened. In fact the whole Audi sudden acceleration situation was user error due to a pedal placement design, not faulty electronics.

Audi was often criticized for how it responded to their crisis by constantly saying how there was no sudden acceleration situation in their product and it took years to show there wasn't, but unfortunately the public perception damage was done and it took a decade or so for Audi to repair its image.

Marketing a Crisis Response

Toyota is trying to do that same repair and is even marketing how the sudden acceleration demonstration performed by David Gilbert for an ABC News story was a false demonstration not using the actual Toyota product design. Toyota responded with a press release stating it has, "raised serious concerns about the validity, methodology and credibility of a demonstration."

What's most interesting to me as a marketer is how Toyota is getting their story to their consumers. Toyota has bought an ad network buy to get some banners out to tell their side and publicly discredit Gilbert.

The ads feature Professor David Gilbert with copy calling Gilbert a "critic of Toyota electronics." Gilbert isn't identified by his professional title as an automotive technology professor at Southern Illinois University. To Toyota he is a critic of the company.

Then when a person clicks the ad they are taken to a landing page full of content showing why Gilbert's demo is false and Toyota's position on the sudden acceleration issue, plus their response to help concerned customers.

It's all an interesting implementation from Toyota. Instead of letting the "experts" define the issue, Toyota is fighting back with its marketing dollars to regain some ground and not let what they consider misinformation fester and contribute to a long damaging reputation similar to what Audi experience 20 years ago.

The ABC News report featuring David Gilbert:

VW Banner Brings the Inside Out

Everyone wants to convince you their small vehicle feels big inside. With car companies moving to more B and C class segment platforms to appease the desire for more fuel efficient cars in America, the marketing must find creative ways to illustrate, through images or words, how roomy all these new small cars really are, even if they are not. Americans like big and small products still need to be sold as such.

One interesting example of creatively showing a "huge" interior from a small car comes from BBDO for their client Volkswagen. The ad markets the VW Fox (not available here in the United States) with the car's interior being pulled inside out to reveal the interior in an interesting fun way.

The banner uses a slider that changes the car from the beginning to end frame shown in the image above. You can also play with the banner at BannerBlog here.

It is a clever execution and maybe there is a way to use this technique in a more interesting way to communicate a vehicle's inner beauty as I feel it isn't really that effective at communicating the interior as roomy or "huge" as the ad copy reads. It is playful, but does one really get the idea the car has decent dimensions inside? Not quite.