Here were their responses:

According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Avoider Study, released today, brand perception, more than personal experience or hard data, is among the major reasons many new-vehicle buyers don’t consider a certain badge. In fact, while 43 percent avoided a brand because of their perception of quality and reliability issues, 38 percent based their decision not to consider on ratings and reviews, and only 14 percent on prior ownership of a brand’s vehicle.

Other notable highlights include a pronounced “buy American” sentiment and the continued importance of gas mileage.

Fuel efficiency, in fact, was found to be “the most influential reason for purchasing a particular vehicle model,” outpacing considerations regarding reliability and exterior styling, which were the dominant influences as recently as 2010.

As for the “buy American” trend, the report states that the number of buyers who avoid import models strictly because of their country of origin has increased to 14 percent, while those avoiding domestics for the same reason has dropped to 6 percent; the figures rate as a historic high and low, respectively, since the study began in 2003.

An interesting note on alternative-powertrain vehicles: While fuel efficiency and environmental impact were clearly the major reasons for buyers to consider the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf and Toyota Prius, the next-most-cited reasons, as well as the reasons for dismissing them, varied from vehicle to vehicle. Buyers who considered the Volt took into account the image the vehicle portrays, while the Leaf’s low maintenance costs and and the Prius’ reliability were cited as enticing factors for those models. As for why potential customers dismissed those vehicles, both the Prius and Leaf were plagued by exterior styling issues, but the most prominent reason for not considering the Volt was price.

The J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Avoider Study was based on data collected from approximately 24,045 owners who registered a new vehicle in May 2011.

Here were their responses:

This has a major impact in keyword optimization and web content strategies. Google will still show referral website traffic but not the keywords used in search to arrive at your site.

Some blogs are estimating that only 10% of web surfers are logged in but that number has to be greater. There are 300 million Gmail users and 550,000 Android phones are activated a day so this is a big issue.

Here is the official announcement from Google:

As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, particularly for signed in users, we believe that protecting these personalized search results is important. As part of that effort, today the Google Search team announced that SSL Search on https://www.google.com will become the default experience for signed in users on Google.com (see the Official Google Blog post to learn more).

To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token “(not provided)” within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that “cpc” paid search data is not affected.Google changes their algorithm fairly regularly. How do you continue to sell cars every day AND stay on top of changes and additions to Google Analytics?

Having a trusted ally in the ever changing automotive internet marketing industry is imperative. Graham Advertising has been around for 30+ years serving the automotive advertising community with fresh, exceptional work. Graham is an automotive marketing group who takes the time to understand your niche and build a marketing advertising plan that truly shows results.

Follow Graham Advertising @grahamadv for up-to-date automotive marketing advertising news and information.

The Bad: Even though the arrival of native QR scanning in Android and/or iOS would be a boon for mainstream adoption, the move would elbow out increasingly popular third-party scanning apps and draw the ire of developers.


The Ugly: Overwhelmed by the variety of QR uses in marketing campaigns, bad “carpenters” keep blaming their tools, and repeat simple mistakes that disappoint many first-time consumer scanners. 


Whether you love or hate QR codes, they’ll become progressively more ubiquitous and useful as they mature from hype to marketing line item.

Augmented Reality (AR)
The Good: Thanks to the exponential rise of capable mobile devices, a few AR campaigns will successfully break through to capture mainstream imaginations. And despite the highly proprietary nature of most AR, efforts like Aurasma‘s will continue striving to build scalable platforms.

The Bad: Similar to QR’s initial reception, the wider availability of easy AR creation tools will result in many more uninspired efforts, disappointing first-time users. The situation is further exacerbated by the broad definition of what “augmented reality” is and by uncertain consumer expectations.

The Ugly: The challenge of consistently retaining consumer attention beyond initial novelty (especially if a leading provider doesn’t emerge) threatens to relegate AR marketing to a modern flop.

In the absence of a dominant AR mobile marketing app, a plurality of contenders will fight to attain precious network effects, all the while searching for the “sticky” use cases and supporting performance metrics that result in repeat usage.

Near Field Communication (NFC)
The Good: Even though mobile wallets have held the spotlight, competition among providers hastens hardware penetration for mobile marketing opportunities, like the ability to swap SIM cards for NFC in lieu of upgrading one’s entire device. Early campaigns will appear in tandem with QR codes.

The Bad: Total NFC mobile penetration will remain below critical mass for mainstream deployments, constraining good campaigns to tightly focused areas, while exposing poorly conceived campaigns with less reach to critical scorn.

The Ugly: As competition escalates among mobile wallet hopefuls like Google Wallet, ISIS, and their respectively exclusive carriers, cross-compatibility of NFC standards across mobile devices will be threatened.
The competitive landscape of mobile payments in 2012 will play a large role in either accelerating or forestalling NFC’s mobile marketing future.

The Field (Everybody Else)
The Good: Offline-online tech will quietly thrive, especially that which offers simplicity with mass compatibility, like Zoove’s StarStar numbers. Also, startups like ShopKick, which diligently cultivates lucrative redemption and loyalty behavior into passionate user bases, will enjoy increased participation.

The Bad: Recognition apps will continue to fetishize the technology and ignore whether the end result is any good, with the exception of Google Goggles, which will seamlessly integrate into Android’s camera (effectively making visual search opt-out).

The Ugly: Some offline-online startups will be forced to transition from enthusiastic early adopters to monetizing mainstream demand. The true nature of “checking-in” will be called into question.

QR, AR and NFC are getting all kinds of buzz, but a healthy contingent of other contenders is also vying to close the loop. Given the wide spectrum of opportunities in offline-to-online engagement, it’s not inconceivable that multiple technologies can succeed across mutually exclusive consumer behaviors.

Here are their responses:

Here are some photos pre-meeting from the Northwest Toyota Dealers board meeting here in our studio:

So we asked instead, ‘What Was Your First VEHICLE?’ and got everything from unicycles, bicycles, tricycles and motorcycles to Vespas, Mazdas and Pontiacs.

You can chime in too: What was your first ride?

Special thank you goes out to Jerry for helping Taryn, Jess and Meagan load the truck!