Cobalt leverages Social Media for some awesome PR and Reputation Management

Last Monday I was going through my normal Monday morning Twitter catch up. Making sure I didn’t miss anything of importance over the weekend.

As I was browsing my stream, a particular tweet happen to catch my eye.

Just Saab had posted a small rant about Cobalt turning off their dealerships’ splash page with no warning of doing so. Ouch! At the same time they grounded Cobalt, expressed their new love for Dealer.com. I’m sure Dealer.com was loving this.

Apparently someone from Cobalt’s team (I had a feeling I knew who this might be) had caught the tweet and contacted Just Saab, verifying that Cobalt  had indeed messed up. They took down the 2 dealerships’ splash page with no warning, and with no way of reversing the removal of the page.

Cobalt with the help of @auto_marketeer (our friend Jade) obviously wanted to “make it right” with Just Saab and shifted the lingering bad taste in their mouth to one of goodwill. Cobalt decided to do something a bit on the creative and personal side. They searched JustSaab’s Twitter stream and found the following tweet:

At that point, (speaking with Jade) the Cobalt marketing department made the decision to send Just Saab an Xbox System and Forza Motorsport 4. Since the entire dealership was affected, not just this one individual, they sent over Skyline Chili lunch for the whole dealership the Friday after.

This resulted in the following:

WOW. It was impressive to watch this go down. Let’s all agree, from a company that we would least expect it from (sorry Cobalt). Maybe those GenY employees do know what their doing.

Is this a sign of a new, more dealer-centric Cobalt?

This reminded me of the awesome Gary Vaynerchuk Keynote speech at DSES. Word of mouth is the strongest form of marketing and today’s word of mouth is online. However, business/dealers continue to spend money on traditional forms of marketing hoping to win the sprint while not conditioning for the marathon.

Are you following your dealerships reputation on Facebook and Twitter?

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In yet another show of why brand management is so important and content is key, Chrysler has fired its agency, New Media Strategies, due to an errant tweet sent yesterday. The tweet, meant to be sent from the strategists personal account but mistakenly sent from the @ChryslerAutos handle, read “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive.”

Chrysler immediately jumped into action and sacked the agency, issuing this statement on their blog today, “So why were we so sensitive? That commercial featuring the Chrysler 200, Eminem and the City of Detroit wasn’t just an act of salesmanship. This company is committed to promoting Detroit and its hard-working people. The reaction to that commercial, the catchphrase ‘imported from Detroit,’ and the overall positive messages it sent has been volcanic.”

Good for Chrysler for jumping into action after narrowly avoiding a serious brand mistake.

Lesson of the day? Ensure the people around you and working for you believe strongly in your brand and what it represents. Everybody needs to take up the call when it comes to your messaging and identity.

How many people at your dealer have access to tweet on behalf of your dealerships twitter account?

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Cars.com will be going live March 15th with their Dealer Reviews.

Many of us have several questions like “Why is Cars.com getting into dealer ratings?” I asked Nick Hummer, Product Manager at Cars.com if he would take some time and join me for an exclusive interview / Q&A for DealerRefresh. He was happy to do so.

Before we get into the exclusive interview, a quick reminder that Cars.com will be holding a 4 hour online live web conference right at your desk Tomorrow March 9th starting at 11am ET. You can sign up here!

Lets get started!

Jeff: Nick, why has Cars.com decide to get into the dealer rating business?

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NADA 2011 Reputation Management Labs with Cars.com

Great News!!

Cars.com Dealer Advantage is hosting an array of Dealership Reputation Management workshops and Mini Labs during this years 2011 NADA.They’ve done a stellar job aligning some of our industry professionals and vertical Online Reputation Professionals for these workshops and mini labs.

Click here for the Full Schedule.

If Dealership Review and Ratings are at the forefront of your dealerships overall strategy for 2011, I would highly recommend that you attend one, several or all of the scheduled workshops Cars.com will be hosting.

If by chance you say to yourself – “but Jeff, I only have time for 2.” Well, I have an answer for ya!

Put these on your Calendar and DO NOT MISS THEM!

Sunday 8-9:30am
Rise-and-Shine Breakfast: Embracing Radical Transparency

I’ll be introducing Andy Beal, the Author of “Radically Transparent”. This IS A MUST SEE!

I have personally attended Andy’s workshops and can promise you, you’ll walk away enlightened with some great information that you can take back to your dealership.

People are talking about your store online. What are they saying? How do you find out? How do you respond? And how can you use the conversation to your benefit? The explosion of social media has ushered in a new era of digital transparency that puts the power to enhance or destroy a reputation in the hands of the consumer. In this session, learn from one of the world’s most respected experts in online reputation management how to harness the power of social media with proven tactics and strategies for every phase of online reputation management.

Monday 10-10:30am
Fueling Sales with Online Reviews

One of my personal favorites; Jack Simmons – Cars.com Training Manager, will be drilling myself and the one and only Tom White, GM of Suzuki of Wichita on how our  dealerships use reviews to drive more service appointments and accelerate new and used car sales. And we have Screen Shots!!

It should/will be good. I’m looking forward to sharing the stage with Tom, someone that’s a real pioneer on our industry.

Don’t miss it!

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Cars.com Introduces Dealer Reviews

Today, Cars.com announced they would be introducing Dealer Reviews come spring of 2011. This is a huge announcement in my opinion and one that will continue to change the landscape for dealerships. A customer will now not only find the vehicle they’re interested in but at the same time decide if your dealership has the reputation they expect.

Cars.com is the first major 3rd party online inventory listings portal to dive into Dealership Reviews and with time, I’m sure we might see others jump on the wagon.

Boy, do we have our work cut out for us?

If you’ve been reading DealerRefresh, you understand the importance and already have a process down for managing your dealers online reputation. If you have yet to get on-board with online reputation management, you might want to consider now a good time to get on-board!

I was privileged to be part of a dealer panel during the Cars.com Sales Summit just a few weeks ago for the announcement of  Dealership Reviews.  I can attest that Cars.com is taking this this new service very serious. They took a great deal of time and resources to figure out how this fits into their service from a dealers and consumer perspective.

I’m personally truly excited about this new offering and believe it’s a huge game changer.

How do you feel about Cars.com offering Dealership Review? - Speak up and share your thoughts and comments. We plan to have an exclusive interview with Cars.com in the next several days. Some of your comments will help round the interview.

“Dealer Reviews is an exciting new feature on Cars.com that allows you to use word-of-mouth marketing to accelerate sales. That’s right, it puts the power of word-of-mouth marketing where shoppers can read your reviews and then quickly access your inventory. It also gives you the power to manage your reputation and advertising in one location. Visit dealers.cars.com/reviews to learn more before the spring beta launch.”

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