Print and Automotive
It should not come as a shock that people are spending more of their time – and doing more of their buying – online these days. This is particularly true of those working from home.
An estimate by "Upwork" states that one in four Americans, over 26% of the American workforce, is expected to work remotely through 2021. As a result, more people are exposed to, and engaged with, more digital ads than ever before – leading to digital fatigue and a desensitization toward what they’re seeing. The result? They’re ignoring ads that don’t stand out and connect with them – leaving digital marketers desperately seeking new ways to sell products, services and solutions. This is especially true for automotive brands, an industry hit hard by the pandemic.
Both the print industry and automotive industry are excellent at innovating. They also both excel at identifying growth opportunities and improving how they interact with their customers. It’s no surprise, then, that in recent years these industries have tightened their customer connection and expanded their innovative tendencies – case-in-point, the electric vehicle segment of the auto industry. Accelerated by the pandemic, EV represents a booming new sector that feeds off innovation. BNEF expects the global share of EVs in new sales to increase by 50%, from 4% to 6% in 2021, rising further to 8% in 2022.
Recognizing the value in using print to complement the digital experience, auto brands have turned to interactive print – some long before the pandemic. In 2012, Nissan teamed up with Layar to create an interactive newspaper campaign for their Altima model utilizing augmented reality. Using Layar’s AR app, readers hovered over the printed image with their phone to see clickable pop-ups that showed off the car’s features and prompted readers to book a test drive. The campaign was a hit, generating 8 million views in just one day, and increasing the rate of Altima test drives by a massive 65%. This kind of innovative marketing – driven by interactive print – is what drives engagement and accelerates consumer (and business) buying decisions.
Why Print Is So Powerful at Engaging Buyers
What makes interactive print so effective as a marketing tool is the unique experience it provides – an experience that unites the physical and digital worlds. This "phygital" experience has three elements to it. Let’s break them down to illustrate how innovation in print improves the customer experience and drives more business – both for the printer – and their customers.
Engaging Touch
Humans like to touch things. It’s a powerful sense that allows us to gather information about objects, and is a medium for building trust and showing compassion between one another. Studies have shown that haptic (touch) memory has the strongest impact on the human brain. This is why even millennials – who are so entwined with the digital landscape – are so attached to paper. Eighty percent of them are unable to picture their life without it. By engaging the instinctual desire to touch, print makes it possible for companies in the automotive industry to create a stronger and more memorable brand connection.
Active Engagement
Capturing attention is one thing. Keeping it is another. In 2018, Audi partnered with Structural Graphics and PHD Media to create a custom print insert for Departures magazine to advertise it’s A8 model. The insert mimicked the lighting sequence of the A8’s unique taillight pattern, and each issue came with a plastic key fob that allowed readers to re-engage the lighting sequence.
This is where the interactive part of interactive print comes into play. Products that provide an AR experience generate, on average, 94% more conversions compared to those without. And that’s just AR. When you factor the many other forms of interactive ads, the possibilities for innovation – and engagement – are endless.
A Smooth and Seamless Process
Looping physical and digital experiences together turns a previously fragmented customer acquisition journey into a fluid, smooth, trackable one. It allows buyers to seamlessly navigate their way through a myriad of channels, and helps businesses achieve a core objective – convert prospects into customers. Let’s take Nissan’s campaign as an example. In the first moments of your experience with this ad, the newspaper itself is evoking your instinctual desire to touch. When you turn the page, the tactile, physical experience continues as you bring out your phone and hover over the image of the car. Suddenly, you’re seeing the car’s many features, in virtual 3D – and being prompted to book a test drive with a simple click.
Interactive Print and Direct Mail: The Dynamic Duo
For a long time, personalization meant inserting someone’s
Integrating direct mail with the digital is better at driving consumer action than just using one or the other. Combined, the results generated 39% more attention, 10% more brand awareness and 5% more interest in the brand messaging. Imagine a dealer that has a large number of leases nearly at term. Now imagine a direct mail campaign targeting the relevant leaseholders. Picture yourself as one those leaseholders. You receive a direct mail piece reminding you that your lease is nearly up and shows you a newer model of your current car. On it, there is a QR code that, once scanned, takes you to a personalized video that features the model of your current car, then transforms it into the newer version feature-by-feature, highlighting key features until, like the Nissan campaign, a link brings you to a portal for booking a test drive. In this scenario, direct mail, interactive print and hyper-personalization play a powerful role in the customer journey – complementing digital, social and telemarketing campaigns.
What’s more is that postcards have become an increasingly popular form of direct mail. They’re small (but mighty) brand ambassadors that are easy to read and get to the point quickly. When coupled with personalization and interactive print, postcards are powerful attention-grabbers. Take the above leaseholder campaign as an example and imagine receiving the direct mail reminder via a postcard, as well as a letter. In contrast to the letter, the postcard is begging to be read as it sits in the palm of your hand. Much like a landing page, there’s no envelope to open and you can quickly see what it’s getting at. Unlike a landing page, though, its image is crisp and bright, and its glossy (or matte) finish is oh so touchable and memorable. An inviting and engaging experience, postcards are putting more brands into people’s hands – and are increasingly being used to incentivize recipients to action.
Why Now is the Time to Gear Up Your Print Solutions – And Drive the Automotive Industry
When lockdowns began to occur, auto sales dropped radically. In turn, innovative auto campaigns like Audi’s and Nissan’s geared down. Fast-forward 16 months and the situation is very different, as more and more people head back out on the road – for both business and pleasure.
With a long-standing relationship of providing each other value; printers, automobile brands/dealers, media agencies and tech companies are teaming up, creating increasingly engaging and innovative marketing campaigns for automobiles – and driving business. Leveraging new print technologies, substrates and multi-channel communications, savvy printers are helping the auto (and print) industry bounce back – and potentially even surpass where they were prior to the pandemic.
