Vehicle manufacturer Honda is using enterprise marketing management technology to co-ordinate campaigns across the country.
The online system from Aprimo is saving the company time and money by providing local Honda dealers with templates for marketing activities across all media channels.
Rob Moss, UK dealer marketing manager, says in the past Honda’s network of 200 dealers have conducted their own marketing campaigns.
‘We had very little control. Now we can control everything that you see as a consumer from adverts in local press to banners on the internet and TV campaigns,’ he said. ‘Local dealer ads that used to take 24 hours to be approved are now signed off in three minutes.’
Moss says as well as helping maintain brand consistency, the system will save Honda about £500,000 a year by reducing the use of local advertising firms.
The technology automatically resizes and fits the advertisements to the specifications of a certain publication. The dealer can then make any modifications to a standard template, providing a certain amount of flexibility within a simple format.
‘We are trying to translate what we are doing on a national level to a local level as quickly as possible, so it needs to be easy to use,’ said Moss. ‘Now you can walk into your local showroom and on the shop floor is the same advertising that you saw on TV yesterday.’
Other car manufacturers are using similar systems. A spokesman for BMW said: ‘We have had an electronic dealer marketing kit system for a while, which gives dealers access to all our bespoke advertising templates, for print media and the web, linking our national and local advertising campaigns.