Talking Doesn't Necessarily Drive Engagement

It was just announced that Mini USA will deliver “an ever-changing array of unique, personal, playful and unexpected messages” to Mini Cooper owners via “talking” billboards.

The company mailed 4,500 invitations to owners in 4 cities asking them to provide non-confidential information and opt into the program where billboards will be programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through an RFID-embedded key fob. The signs will, for example, wish them “happy birthday,” or call the car by name. (It’s been reported that more than a third of Mini owners have named their cars.)

Issues of driver distraction and safety notwithstanding, one wonders if there isn’t a more effective way of spending one’s budget to engage customers. Yes, it’s true that the Mini brand was developed off a non-traditional, quirky and creative approach, but it also smacks of Six Million Dollar Man-thinking: We can do it! We have the technology!

If you’re asking yourself if this program doesn’t just reach out and “touch” customers who have already engaged with the brand, you’re not alone. But, it’s been suggested that this program will intensify the strong “tribal” connections between owners and the brand (presumably those are the people who named their cars), which, the thinking goes, will turn owners into evangelists.

Mini Cooper might be interested to know that just attending to advertising – however technologically-advanced – does not guarantee engagement. Getting noticed was never a problem for most brands, and “brand advertising” (even quirky, technologically-inspired advertising) does not make a very large contribution to engagement in the automotive category. Based upon the 2007 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index the contribution – even for a high-loyalty brand like Mini – was only .005%. They might also pay attention to the lessons learned by Volkswagen, where quirky marketing has done wonders to boost buzz, but little to boost sales.

And, if not Brand Keys or Volkswagen, perhaps a version of Ogden Nash:

I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
And really don’t care if you guarantee
The sign I pass will talk to me!