Scion’s Marketing Backfires
July 6th, 2009
A Scion Marketing team was in Denver over the weekend with an original marketing idea. As opposed to the traditional way of car shopping by visiting dealerships, Scion brought their fleet of cars to the streets of downtown Denver. The Scion Street Team set up camps at various locations allowing people to test drive their cars around the block. In order to lure more pedestrians to drive their cars, they offered gift certificates to the various store fronts that allowed them to set up camp out front of their locations. These locations included: City, O’ City, Tokyo Joe’s and Wax Trax.
Although this may seem like a unique concept, many of the people taking part in this event had no interest what so ever in any of the Scion vehicles. People were asked to test drive one of their cars and then fill out a survey on their perception of the Scion’s xD, xB, and tC, in exchange for a free gift certificate. People hastily filled out the surveys, not taking them seriously, just to get their “free money”. In other words, the businesses that participated seemed to be reaping the benefits of Scion’s advertising attempt.
Many of the street team members were fairly in tune with the fact the people had no real interest in their cars. So they allowed people to skip the test drive, incompletely fill out the survey and get them on their merry way. Scion also hired professional drivers to accompany the few people that actually took advantage of the test drive, who seemed especially unenthusiastic “baby sitting” these drivers.
To me, Scion’s plan completely failed. I believe I would be hard pressed to find anyone who felt differently about the cars after having driven them. City, O’ City, Tokyo Joe’s and Wax Trax definitely experienced a surplus of business from the over-the-top marketing campaign. It seemed all parties that participated in this event benefited, except for Scion.
Tags: City, O' City, Scion, tC, Tokyo Joe's, Wax Trax, xB, xD
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The problem with Scion’s approach is that they are asking too much of their target audience. The strategy should be that of generating awareness via product placement - the idea of having Scions placed in locations where their target audience spends time, be it Tokyo Joe’s, Wax Trax, or other locations depending on how Scion profiles and segments. Asking people to take their time to test drive and fill out surveys is just too much. That’s like asking for a prenuptial agreement before the first date.
Posted by: Dave Dute On August 10, 2009 at 5:05 pm