Thursday, April 22, 2010

Holy Rollers, GM Test-Drives Cars at Detroit Church

The auto showroom is the place most people see new cars up close and personal, but GM is taking a unique approach to moving cars to where the potential customers are. The eye-catching headline out of the Detroit News was of a “ride-and-drive” mobile GM showroom that was set up outside a Baptist church in Detroit on Sunday with the pastor’s blessing, aiming to expose people to GM cars that might not make their way into a conventional showroom. Less theologically-questionable ride-and-drives have been done in California outside of coffee-houses and Korean restaurants, as GM experiments with alternative marketing methods.

Alternative marketing might become more of an issue as GM dealers close up shop; GM is looking at online marketing tools and other non-traditional ways of marketing cars. One alternative that is rather old-school comes from Japan, where cars are sold door-to-door much as life insurance or cosmetics are sold in the US. Busy people might not want to spend time going to a car dealership, but if the cars are at church or at their favorite watering hole, they might stop by to take a look.

This brings some possible extra work for car haulers; unless the cars are individually driven out to the locations, there might be work opportunity for car carriers to get the cars out to the remote locations. Unloading the hauler could be problematic in some settings, but it could also be a conversation piece that would draw attention to the event-“What the *$&#* is that car hauler doing in front of the church?”

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100418/AU...f-new-customers

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