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The Lighter Side of Auto Advertising

The Lighter Side of Auto Advertising

The Habit You Don’t Want to Break

The Habit You Don’t Want to Break

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Yesterday, I stopped at the foot of my driveway to get the mail. When I got back in the car, I buckled my seat belt…and drove to the garage. Why? Was I expecting a head-on collision in the eight yards it took to reach the front door? No, but driving any distance without a seat belt feels really weird, and old habits die hard.

 

And as habits go, buckling your seat belt everywhere you go is a pretty good one to have.

 

A birthday to celebrate

 

In 1959, when Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point seat belt, some, but by no means all, cars featured two-point harnesses. Unfortunately, they didn’t work too well and weren’t especially comfortable. Even if they had some life-saving potential, drivers just didn’t want to wear them.

 

With a few design improvements, Bohlin created the technology that was effective, comfortable, and simple to operate.

 

This August, that simple bundle of fabric and metal turns 60 years old. In its relatively short lifetime, it’s delivered outsized results. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concurs:

 

Seat belts are the single most effective safety technology in the history of the automobile. A NHTSA study of lives saved by vehicle technologies found that, between 1960 and 2012, seat belts saved more lives—329,715, to be exact—than all other vehicle technologies combined, including air bags, energy-absorbing steering assemblies, and electronic stability control.

 

What you can do

 

Still there’s more to be done. Consumer Reports estimates that, in spite of the seat belt’s incredible safety record, almost 25 million drivers and passengers don’t use one.

 

But you can do your part to get America to buckle up. Next time you take a customer for a test drive, be sure to point out the car’s best feature – the simple but mighty seat belt.

 

JKR Automotive Advertising: The car dealer ad agency.

 

Iconic Cars

The Most Iconic Cars of TV and Movies

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Iconic CarsIn honor of the popularity of this week’s blog highlighting the original Batmobile, today’s entry focuses on some of the most iconic cars television and the big screen have ever seen. Have you ever wondered the make, year and model of any of TV and movies’ most famous automobiles? Here are the answers to a few of them.

 

Scooby Doo Mystery Machine: In the cartoon series that has undergone a number of variations and recreations since its debut in 1963, the Mystery Machine – the crime-solving youths’ vehicle of choice – was based on the shape of a customized 1963 Ford Econoline van.

 

Starsky and Hutch: During the 1970s cop thriller, detectives David Starsky and Kenneth Hutchinson drove a shiny 1975 Ford Gran Torino bearing the infamous white stripe. Paul Michael Glaser, who played Starsky, said the car looked like a “striped tomato” when he first saw it.

 

Smokey and the Bandit: This action film starred, among others, Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed. The first Bandit movie – along with the two sequels – introduced two generations of the Trans Am to the public.

 

Magnum P.I. Ferrari: The private investigator’s original car was supposed to be a Porsche, but because the automaker wouldn’t do any special customizations to their cars, the show’s producers switched to the now-famous 1977 Ferrari 308 GTS.

 

Knight Rider: What iconic cars list would be complete without a vehicle that had a logic module to talk and communicate – that could speak multiple languages? Named KITT, the original version was a customized 1982 Trans Am. A later adaptation would see a KITT car made from a 1991 Dodge Stealth.

 

Dukes of Hazzard: Arguably one of the most recognizable television cars of all-time, “General Lee” was a 1969 Dodge Charger that accompanied “the Duke boys” on their adventures during the show that ran from 1979-1985. At the time of this writing, the car is owned by professional golfer Bubba Watson, who says he will soon be painting over the large Confederate flag that adorns the front.

 

Back to the Future: In honor of the movie’s anniversary, this car must be on any list such as this! The DeLorean time machine is based on a 1982 DeLorean DMC-12, in which Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty McFly make history of their own.

Top Automobile Ads

Top Automobile Ads for 2014 Released by Ad Age

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Top Automobile AdsAdvertising Age recently released its list of the top automobile ads for 2014. These come from the 2015 second-annual Automobile Advertising of the Year competition, which was held at the North American International Auto Show. The contest is a celebration of creative automotive advertising excellence. This year’s winners were largely from outside the United States.

Taking the top prize for Internet advertising was “Epic Split” for Volvo trucks, featuring action movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme. This blogger had never seen this kind of top automobile ads until now. My first reaction? Ouch! I could not hope to do anything like that on my best day; but I digress.

Ads for Audi (“Scripted Life), Hyundai (Dad’s Sixth Sense) and Toyota (for their Australian Hilux pickup trucks) won prizes in the broadcast TV category; while Honda’s “The Other Side” received the interactive award. Volkswagen’s powerful “Eyes on the Road” presentation about the dangers of texting and driving took the experiential category top prize.

The only US-based company taking home any hardware was Jeep, whose “Upside Down” series captured the print advertisement honor.

Get Top Automobile Ads for Your Store

JKR Automotive Advertising is well-known in automotive advertising circles for its own creativity, and that is one of the many reasons our clients outperform their peers day after day … month after month … year after year.

If you’d like to kick the tires a little, give Eric Tigner a call at (321) 397-0777 today … and for your efforts you’ll receive a FREE Automotive Advertising Review containing not only valuable information about your market … but also an evaluation of your current advertising efforts.

You’ll get a taste of our abilities at no charge or to you. Once you discover all the ways JKR can benefit you and your dealership, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without us!

JKR Automotive Advertising: We Move Cars.

Dealership Deflategate

The Dealership Deflategate Solution: JKR Automotive Advertising

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Dealership DeflategateThe drama concerning Deflategate gets more interesting by the day, as the National Football League continues to look into why 11 of the 12 footballs used by the New England Patriots in this year’s AFC Championship Game were significantly low on air. Regardless of the ultimate verdict, the Patriots certainly left the Indianapolis Colts and star quarterback Andrew Luck feeling deflated!

It’s pretty safe to say that we all have our theories on what happened (or didn’t happen) with the footballs, but we’ll leave that discussion to the talking heads on TV and radio because that’s not the actual point of this blog. We are focusing on a completely different kind of Deflategate; Dealership Deflategate … the kind you experience at the end of each month when sales weren’t what you projected.

You can blame it on whatever you want (bad luck, bad weather, a notoriously bad month every year, bad this, bad that) … but the bottom line is that when it happens, you do feel that sense of deflation; like someone came in and took the wind right out of your sails just when everything was going well.

Dealership Deflategate Remedy

Dealership Deflategate is bound to happen to even the best dealerships every now and again, but it if it’s happening to you more than you think it should, it could be time to look into retaining a new automotive advertising agency. And when that time comes, the choice should be JKR Automotive Advertising.

Since our inception eight years ago, JKR has become an automotive advertising giant. Much of our success is a byproduct of our relentlessness to do whatever it takes to help our clients grow and increase their market share. We know each client’s market, situation and budget are unique to them, so we don’t buy into the cookie-cutter, “one-size-fits-all” mentality – and our clients certainly appreciate that.

But at the end of the day, it’s really this simple: We’ve become who we are because our clients outperform their competition. If they didn’t, we would not have more than 120 of them in the JKR family of dealerships, many of whom have been with us since Day One (or close to it).

JKR helps its clients avoid Dealership Deflategate. So now it’s your ball … what are you gonna do with it? Call Eric Tigner today at (321) 397-0777 to kick things off, and you’ll get a FREE advertising report for your efforts. We’ll show you how you’re doing in your market, how your competition is doing, and a whole lot more – no strings attached. Once you get a small sample of our capabilities (and here’s a hint: we can do it all), you’ll understand.

Think of JKR as the agency that can add a couple pounds of extra air pressure to your advertising and marketing strategies – because that’s exactly what we do for some of the country’s best automotive dealers!

JKR Automotive Advertising: We Move Cars.

Automotive Industry vs. Computer

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Automotive IndustryWhat if the automotive industry was more like the computer industry? We at JKR Automotive Advertising recently came across a very funny article comparing the two industries, and we’ll use today’s blog to paraphrase. (Note: We suspected this wasn’t actually true, so we did a little research. Snopes.com says this is false … but it is still funny nonetheless, and worth sharing.)

It begins by detailing the thoughts of a high-ranking official of a major computer company. This person essentially said that if the automotive industry kept up with the technology of the computer industry, today’s auto manufacturers (one was singled out) should be offering $25 cars that get 1,000 miles to the gallon.

Automotive Industry Like Computer’s?

The auto maker’s response allegedly came in the form of a well-thought-out press release that said if their company (and the automotive industry in general) had indeed developed technology like the computer industry, the following things would happen (the most amusing ones are listed here):

(1)    For no reason, your car would crash … sometimes multiple times per day.

(2)    When the lines in the road were repainted, you would have to buy a new car.

(3)    Your car could occasionally die on the road for no reason. When this happened, you would need to close the windows, shut off the car, restart it and re-open the windows before you could proceed ahead.

(4)    Executing maneuvers such as left turns could sometimes cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart … which would require you to reinstall the engine.

(5)    The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by one single warning light that said “This Car Has Performed an Illegal Operation.”

(6)    Airbag systems would ask, “Are You Sure?” before deploying.

(7)    You would need to press the “start” button to shut off the engine.

Just imagine the automotive advertising for cars like this! It might be a challenge, but you can bet that JKR Automotive Advertising would still be able to move cars for its clients!  To find out what JKR can do for you, call Eric Tigner today at (321) 397-0777. When you do, we’ll give you a free advertising report that details what’s going on in your market – and what your competitors are doing. It’s valuable information you can use … so take the first step and give us a call.

JKR Automotive Advertising: We Move Cars.

 

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