Cars.com Superbowl commercials - What did you think?

[Lao Shi]

The thing that stood out the most to me is there was no increase in activity from Cars.com the week after the game. None what so ever and this is from a number of clients I work with.

Like auto trader and others, the gig is up for their providing the solution of delivery of customers to the store, at least in this economy. it is back to the old stand by, building customer loyalty and relationships with great service, sharp pricing strategies, catering to the customer's needs and finding that niche consumer who is doing well in this economy and can/will afford the purchase of a new vehicle.

This down cycle will probably last another 18 months or longer if we are faced with an another successful terrorist attack. I think Cars.com will wish they had that 2.6 million to cushion the economic impact and shortage of cash which is on the horizon.

Hey, the executives I am sure enjoyed the comp tickets for the game, the parties and had a chance to play with the big boys for a week so not all the effort was wasted.

 

[Ben]

"Like auto trader and others, the gig is up for their providing the solution of delivery of customers to the store, at least in this economy"

I agree with this. We have been experiencing much more ROI from targeted local SEM. Is the internet classified model changed that significantly in the past 2 year period? Have others experienced this?

 

[McCoy Wood]

Lao,

What market do you work in? In Hampton Roads, VA the Cars.com participating dealers (as a group) have seen a 37% increase in the amount of calls to their dealerships and a 22% increase in the amount of emails. This doesn't even include the increase in traffic to their websites and the "print the ad/write down the info" walk-in customers. I just use phone calls and emails because we are typically only judged by those conversion rates. I'm pulling data from the first 11 days of January 2008 versus the first 11 days of February 2008 in Hampton Roads. That shows a significant increase in traffic the week after the game. I bet this increase in traffic only grows since the Super Bowl was just the beginning of a $200 million 2008 Cars.com advertising/branding campaign.

 

[Jeff Larsen (blog)]

Quick update...

Month to date compared to Jan 08 and Feb 07 on all relative stats I listed previously: down 10% - 20%

Maybe Im just in a market area similar to Lao's. Will update soon with precise numbers.