In an in-depth interview Andy O’Brien, Creative Director at Amaze, discusses the current state of the automotive industry and explains the role of Lexus’ new website within the car manufacturer’s global rebrand. Andy spoke alongside Lexus at our Digital Conference on 12 July 2012.
With so much emphasis currently placed on apps, social media and all the other new tools in the digital marketer’s utility belt, there’s a danger that the good old fashioned website ends up slightly sidelined. Yet increasingly there’s a sense among industry experts that it’s a brand’s website which is best placed to provide detailed product information, convey sophisticated brand values and host the sort of high value conversations that apps or social media can’t.
This has certainly been the case with Lexus, whose new UK and European website, created by Amaze and launched at the end of May this year, played a pivotal role within a broader rebrand. So how does Andy O’Brien, Amaze’s Creative Director, regard the current state of digital marketing within the automotive industry, and what was the new Lexus website able to achieve that other formats can’t?
Putting Experience In Context
AOB: In the last couple of years there’s been a trend across digital, but specifically in the automotive sector, to use all these different devices and channels to compartmentalise messaging and experience,” he says.
Tablets, for example, tend to get used for apps which may present a lovely brand experience which, ultimately, is not actually that useful. Brands are using social media to offer under-the-skin informality, and then using mobile to provide tools which, if you only use your mobile, simply don’t have any context. And that isn’t working. To use a rather awkward marketing phrase, a ‘connected digital ecosystem’ is what we’re after. Everything should be contextual to the device, but ultimately most digital activity will drive you back the website, which is where everything should exist in the right balance and offer the right experience. Social’s important and there’s a role for a certain kind of conversation or experience within Facebook or Twitter. But in the automotive industry there can be a difference between where the brand thinks that relationship is, and where the user thinks it is. As a user – someone looking to buy a car – you probably have a relationship with the dealership. But the people who control and manage that relationship are the brands.
Those brand strategies may be managed at a national or even an international level, so there can be a bit of a disconnect there.
FD: In creating the new Lexus site, he explains, Amaze undertook extensive research into the sort of experiences users wanted when looking at a product as complex as a new car. That meant examining not just specific attitudes towards Lexus, but analysing user behaviour within the sector generally.
AOB: Automotive presents quite a long buying process,” says O’Brien. “It’s shortening, but in the premium sector where we operate, it can still be nine months or a year. That means marketing in general, but specifically digital, has to have a two-pronged approach. You have to grab people at the point when they’re making a decision, but you’ve also got to establish a long conversation. Now, generally, you don’t get a lot of 19-year old lads who dream of buying a Lexus, but then most 19-year-old lads can’t afford a premium car. However, one day they do want to buy a Porsche or a BMW or whatever. That’s a 20 year relationship, potentially. You’re not going to invest enormous amounts in that, but you do have to be aware of the long conversation, and that can be a challenge.”
FD: Part of Amaze’s research involved looking at changes to the buying process itself. Five years ago, says O’Brien, most potential customers visited several dealerships in the run up to a purchase. Now 25 per cent of consumers visit just one. The net, Amaze, discovered, has stripped out a significant section of the buying process, providing consumers with instant access to the information they need.
AOB: We’ve been able to understand where in the journey digital is most useful,” he says. “We can see at what point it can change minds, at what point it can convert. And that means we’ve been able to create a website that answers those challenges.”
Briefing For A Rebrand
FD: So with the Lexus global rebrand in the offing and a new website scheduled to go along with it, what exactly was brand’s brief, and how were Amaze able to fulfil it?
AOB: The brief was, simply, can we have the best premium automotive website in the world, please? Which is a great brief! Lexus knew they needed a new website, and this happened to coincide with the rebrand. ‘Creating amazing’ is the new brand positioning – so the timing was perfect.
Users’ expectations are enormously sophisticated now and that’s been driven by the web in general. And automotive websites have, if not lagged behind, perhaps not quite kept up with users’ expectations. Our research was to find out what users wanted from automotive websites. Then, given the new brand direction, we wanted to present that in a way that only Lexus could. This is a premium brand, so it can’t just shout ‘please buy me.’ But the calls to action had to be easy to access and the integration of that has to be quite subtle – though not too subtle.
FD: Part of the new site’s remit, O’Brien explains, was making it clear what the brand stood for, and that meant combining brand and product information in a single space. Longer pages across the site, he says, were designed to make navigation easier.
AOB: That’s a trend you’ll see over the next year or so because people can get lost on websites where there’s a lot of detailed content. It’s a way of differentiating Lexus too. We also offer different ways of consuming information, which means there are different ways users can start understanding a car. You can interact with the site to change colours and so on. You can read editorial articles as you would in a magazine. Or you can simply start browsing a gallery of images and video.
Now, that sounds quite simple, but nobody else is doing that. People’s mores differ across Europe so the beauty of this is that, in Germany say, users can roll their sleeves up and start playing with the car right away, whereas in another country they may just want to lean back and read about it. Each country can configure their own websites based on this model and what they know about consumers and analytics.
FD: Given the size and sophistication of the sector and the complex nature of our relationship with automotive brands, what other insight does O’Brien have into the value of a website over other channels?
AOB: One of our principles here was to tell the Lexus story through the car. People don’t go to a website thinking, I wonder what the brand stands for? They go there because they’re looking for a car and they don’t want anything to get in the way of that. So the brand messaging and the content needs to be woven into that story.
In this case, we evolved the website at the same time as the new direction, working with Lexus’ above-the-line agency CHI in helping to find the best way to express that. Now, obviously that’s led by the above-the-line agency because they do the TV, press and outdoors. But in TV and press the brand is represented. Online, that actually is the brand. With the website, rather than simply saying ‘create amazing’ we want to actually be that. Digital allows you to be the brand, rather than just reflect it.
Article by Jon Fortgang