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EVENT AT A GLANCE
Objective: Generate 3,600 qualified leads and 3,600 event-day test drives of the 2009 Subaru Forester.
Strategy: Engage targeted consumers with a meaningful conversation about sustainability and disseminate information about Subaru of America Inc.’s long-standing position as an environmental leader.
Tactics: Launch the 2009 Subaru Forester Sustainability Tour and host test-drive events at natural-food
retailers in key Subaru markets across the United States.
Results: Generated 5,248 qualified leads, 4,958 event-day test drives, and more than $150,000 in incremental revenue for natural-food retailers.
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oom, zoom, zoom. Moving forward. Built Ford tough. Like a rock. Ask your average American to rattle off some slogans for famous car commercials, and most won’t be at a loss for words. And why should they? The automotive industry spends the most money on advertising of any major product category in the United States, with more than $10 billion spent in 2008, according to figures from The Nielsen Co.
In a marketplace so saturated with advertising, promoting new cars means spending big bucks to inundate potential customers with product messaging on television, in print, and online, or coming up with creative marketing strategies to reach desired demographics
without breaking the bank.
Successfully connecting with auto buyers is a commonplace problem for a company like Subaru of America Inc., based in Cherry Hill, NJ. The automaker, which is a division of Japanese parent company Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., produces a meager 1 to 2 percent of all traditional auto advertising, according to Tim Stallings, regional marketing manager for Subaru’s south central region. “Awareness levels for the brand are very low,” he says.
While Subaru isn’t the biggest advertising spender, it has excelled at developing creative ad campaigns and reaching out to smaller niche demographics. The company began carving out a respectable name for itself in the United States roughly a decade ago by calling upon Crocodile Dundee himself, Paul Hogan, to market what became its signature car, the Outback. Subaru also made history by being the first automaker to publish advertisements specifically targeting the gay and lesbian community when it ran ads for the Outback in gay publications in 1995. The print ads targeted lesbian consumers, and the company has continued to market strongly to the gay demographic; a famous 2000 television campaign featured Martina Navratilova, and a 2006 ad coyly stated that while “some people think there should only be one road in life ... the 2006 Subaru Forester is built for all of them, whichever way you go.”
But in 2008, Subaru faced a
new challenge relating to the Forester: getting the word out to consumers about the 2009 model. Subaru had produced the compact SUV since the late ‘90s,
but this third-generation incarnation
had a major selling point its predecessors couldn’t boast — certified Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle (PZEV) status. Unlike hybrid vehicles, which reduce negative environmental impacts simply by using less gas, PZEVs cut out the polluting agents themselves by producing zero evaporative emissions from their fuel systems. In fact, Subaru claims exhaust from the tailpipes of these vehicles can be cleaner than the surrounding air in some of the nation’s smoggier cities.
 PZEVs were born out of tough environmental regulations set by the state of California. And while many companies only offer them there and in several other states that have adopted California standards, Subaru hoped to roll out the PZEV Forester nationwide to demonstrate its commitment to environmental protection. So the company tasked each of its five regions with developing its own plans to drum up some interest and awareness, and ultimately sales. Without much of a budget to speak of, Stallings needed a low-cost plan to get the wheels turning on sales in his region, Subaru’s largest, which encompasses 13 states stretching west to east from Texas to Virginia, and as far north as Kentucky.
SHOPPING FOR AN AUDIENCE
“We wanted to do something grass roots and close to home for the customer, a campaign that would get the product in front of the right audience,” Stallings says of his initial thoughts on developing a comprehensive marketing
campaign for his region. But who
exactly was that intended audience?
Lacking the bucks to simply flood his markets with advertising and hope the message reached the right buyer demographic, Stallings understood that a successful campaign hinged on answering that target-market question. To solve the mystery, he turned to extensive internal marketing data, relying on owner loyalty surveys that Subaru sends to new car buyers. The surveys provided Stallings with years of demographic data on past Forester purchasers, allowing him to sleuth out his current target audience: 35- to 54-year-old higher-income women with an active, outdoor lifestyle, pets, and a passion for environmentalism.
Since the decline in car sales due to the economic downturn has lowered shopper traffic at dealerships, Stallings felt staging events at vendors in his area wasn’t the answer to driving sales in this demographic. “It’s tough these days to get people to go to the dealership for an event when they are hesitant to make big purchases. That’s just the nature of the auto industry in this economic climate. Instead, we wanted to take the product to these consumers so they could experience it in their everyday lives,” he explains. “So we asked ourselves, where do we find someone who fits this profile?” Stallings found his answer in perhaps the most everyday consumer marketplace imaginable — the grocery store.
But the shoppers Stallings needed to reach weren’t Costco bulk buyers or Super Wal-Mart bargain-bin divers. Using his research-based demographics as his customer compass, Stallings tracked his audience to higher-end retailers of natural and organic food.
“Natural- and organic-food customers tend to share the same core values and beliefs as typical Subaru customers,” explains Peter Johnson, CEO and founder of International Outdoor Group (IOG), a Portland, OR-based event-management agency brought in to help Stallings market the Forester. “They enjoy an active outdoor lifestyle and are pet owners, they’re involved with the local community, and they’re concerned about protecting the environment. A very natural cross-pollination exists between these two customer groups,” he says.
 With the people and the place determined, Stallings came up with the plan. Calling it the “Subaru Forester Sustainability Tour,” he would stage a multivenue test-drive event at 72
natural-food retailer locations in his region from April to June 2008, opening the doors of the Forester to his target demographic. In the process, he hoped to generate 3,600 test drives and 3,600 qualified leads.
NO HYBRID, NO PROBLEM
In the auto marketplace, hybrid vehicles are all the rage for consumers committed to environmental protection. In 2000, there were hardly any hybrid vehicles registered to U.S. drivers. Just nine years later, however, half a million hybrids are registered in the United States, and Toyota has sold more than 2 million models of its hybrid Prius worldwide. In contrast, Stallings notes that overall sales and consumer awareness of PZEVs are dramatically lower than that of hybrids.
With this in mind, Stallings recognized he might face a hard sell in getting environmentally conscious consumers to glance at, not to mention test drive, a non-hybrid vehicle, even a PZEV. To Green up his environmental angle, Stallings relied on a compelling narrative about environmental stewardship to push his tour into the fast lane.
While other car companies may focus simply on producing a Greener vehicle, Subaru has set the bar in Greening the process itself. In 2004, the company’s manufacturing plant in Lafayette, IN, became the first auto-assembly plant to achieve zero landfill status: It recycles 99.3 percent of leftover materials from the manufacturing process, with the remainder incinerated to generate steam. A year earlier, the same plant had another auto industry first; the National Wildlife Federation designated it a backyard wildlife habitat. The plant is surrounded by 800 acres of natural prairies and wooded areas that provide a home for native wildlife.
While Stallings emphasizes that Subaru views going Green as “the right thing to do,” not simply a marketing ploy, the value of bringing the company’s environmental responsibility to light in the Forester campaign was undeniable. “Subaru has long been committed to the environment, and its approach to sustainable manufacturing served to establish new standards well before going Green became fashionable,” Johnson explains. “From the Indiana plant to PZEVs, we felt this was a really important story to tell, and an opportunity to build an informative and educational campaign by engaging natural-food customers in a relevant and meaningful conversation about the company’s environmental stewardship.”
Further enhancing the environmental narrative, the entire sustainability tour would be carbon-neutral, as is the case with all client promotions managed by IOG. By calculating a worst-case scenario of the driving and flying necessary for the campaign (20,000 miles), IOG estimated the carbon dioxide emitted during the tour could reach as high as 15,344 pounds. To negate those emissions, IOG purchased 16,000 pounds of carbon offsets through TerraPass Inc., for a cost of only $80.
Stallings felt that by distributing information on Subaru’s environmental leadership and the environmental benefits of driving a PZEV versus a hybrid, and by staging a carbon-neutral marketing campaign, he had a solid platform sure to overcome any concerns about the Forester’s non-hybrid status.
WHOLE HEARTED
However, before Stallings could engage consumers on that platform, he still needed buy-in from the natural-food retail partners whose stores he hoped would serve as the venues for his events. And he tackled that obstacle head on by taming the biggest beast of them all: Whole Foods Market Inc.
“Whole Foods Market was cautious about aligning itself with a car company that doesn’t offer a hybrid vehicle,” Johnson says of the natural-food retailer’s initial resistance to partnering with Subaru. “We had to demonstrate to them the value of this event for their customers and community, and show them how two like-minded companies could work together to actively promote sustainable practices.”
 Demonstrating those principles turned out to be quite a task. The Subaru team worked with three Whole Foods regional offices and traveled to each desired store location to meet with store marketing specialists. At those meetings, they discussed the company’s environmental commitment, the story of the Indiana plant, and the specifics of PZEVs. They also offered to display products and produce from local vendors available inside each store, as part of a static Subaru display planned for each venue. In addition, Subaru planned to coincide each Forester event with Earth Day events that many of the desired store locations already had planned. Finally, Subaru informed Whole Foods that it would purchase a $25 store gift card for each person who test drove the Forester, helping to push revenue inside each grocery store.
After Subaru’s extensive courtship with its venue partners, opposition to the event from Whole Foods and other natural-food retailers melted faster than the polar ice caps. With the grocery stores on board, Stallings and Johnson did the complex work of matching viable grocery-store venues with Subaru dealerships serving each area that could make an actual post-event sale. The company then asked these dealerships to assist in event planning and execution. Participation varied with some dealers running the events entirely, while others simply handled post-event follow-ups for consumers interested in purchasing the Forester.
GET GROCERIES, GET DRIVERS
Apart from hosting the events, Subaru’s retail partners also served as the primary avenue for event promotion. As the target demographic regularly shopped the stores, in-store event promotion was a no-brainer.
Beginning seven to 10 days prior to the events, Subaru flooded the 72 store locations with a total of 500 posters, 250 door decals, 500 cash-register banners, and 150,000 bag stuffers. Created by Subaru’s ad agency, Minneapolis-based Carmichael Lynch, the materials featured a green background, a white apple graphic, and an image of the Forester, deemed “the Greener grocery getter.” They also provided a brief description of Subaru’s environmental efforts at the Indiana plant, the event time and date, and information on giveaways, such as the $25 gift card participants would earn for test driving the Forester, as well as a chance to win prizes such as a bicycle or $500 worth of sustainable products. Retail partners also added event information to their own Web sites and store newsletters.
Stallings notes that he strategically timed event promotion to coincide with typical shopping cycles. “Everyone checking out starting 10 days before the event received a bag stuffer so they’d know about the event when it was time to go get groceries again a week later.”
Apart from in-store promotions, Subaru also relied on participating dealerships to spread the word. Using their databases of customer contact information, gleaned from auto purchases and customers who had their vehicles dealer-serviced, dealers sent out a total of 72,000 direct-mail pieces, which featured the same design and information as in-store promotions. Some dealers also produced radio spots on the event for local markets, all of which included a sustainability tip to gain the ears of environmentally concerned drivers.
GREEN, GREEN, GREEN
Stallings and the south central Subaru team kicked off the event in April 2008, strategically timed to coincide with an increased uptick in going-Green buzz courtesy of Earth Day. At each retail location, shoppers arrived to a literally and figuratively Green display at store entrances. Event staff positioned neon-green Foresters alongside tables draped in green tablecloths and 8-by-8-foot green signs heralding the arrival of “the Greener grocery getter.” At many locations, the hatchback of display cars sat open, and the cargo space of the car served as a showcase area for local, sustainable products and produce available inside that retail store.
 Event staffers answered visitors’ questions about the Forester and spread the word on Subaru’s environmental responsibility by distributing informational handouts. While adult shoppers inquired about the vehicle, staffers kept kids at many locations occupied with Green-related activities such as drawing contests, helping them plant saplings in compostable pots to take home, or teaching them how to make bird houses out of bird seed.
Visitors who opted to take a five- to eight-minute test drive received a $25 gift card for the retail store hosting the event, while staff treated interested passersby to free organic cotton T-shirts and reusable shopping bags, both branded with “the Greener grocery getter” tagline. Inside each shopping bag, visitors found information (printed on recycled paper) about Subaru’s Indiana plant and a questionnaire designed to help them improve Green practices in their everyday lives.
Event staff collected contact info from visitors interested in learning more about purchasing a Forester from their local dealership. Those who provided an e-mail address received a thank-you e-mail several days after the event. Two weeks later, dealerships followed up with product mailers, which featured incentives such as $500 off the purchase of a new Forester.
BAG IT UP!
As the tour wrapped up in June 2008, the benefits of the campaign began rolling in to dealerships. Subaru saw all-time sales records for the Forester in June, July, and August 2008, with sales up 41 percent, 51 percent, and 73 percent, respectively, when compared to the same months in 2007. Stallings says that the 5,248 qualified leads and 4,958 test drives generated at the events in his south central region (45 percent and 38 percent above goal, respectively) resulted in the sale of at least 28 vehicles. The 510 hours of one-on-one time with visitors at the events also increased exposure for the Forester and the Subaru environmental brand story.
“Our soft return on investment for this is getting product and brand exposure in front of the right people, while our hard return on investment is really collecting a database of customer contact information so we can follow up with these people regarding the car,” Stallings says.
Due to the overwhelming success of the 2008 campaign in the south central region, Subaru expanded the sustainability tour to two other regions that year, and brought it back in 2009 for all five Subaru regions. While most event elements have remained unchanged, Subaru did launch an informational Web site on the event (hosted on Subaru.com), where consumers can pre-register for test drives, and find out more about the company’s environmental policies.
While other automakers funnel big bucks into the ads consumers TiVo past each night, Stallings notes that Subaru has quietly increased its market share to its highest point ever, near 2.5 percent. With an innovative marketing approach and demographic-specific outreach, the company has proved that what used to be a trivial trip to the grocery store can also be an event experience that drives awareness, exposure, and sales of the eco-friendly Forester. E
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