DEALER COOP PLATFORM

TitleDEALER COOP PLATFORM
BrandKIA
Product/ServiceKIA DEALER COOP PLATFORM
Category A05. Business Transformation
Entrant HAVAS MEDIA Madrid, SPAIN
Idea Creation HAVAS MEDIA Madrid, SPAIN
Idea Creation 2 DBI Madrid, SPAIN
Idea Creation 3 ECSELIS Madrid, SPAIN
Media Placement HAVAS MEDIA Madrid, SPAIN
Production DBI Madrid, SPAIN
Production 2 ECSELIS Madrid, SPAIN
Credits
Name Company Position
Alexander López Havas / Ecselis Performance Senior Executive
Stela Martín Havas / Ecselis Performance Manager
Miguel López Havas / Ecselis Performance Manager
Margarita Arcos Havas / Ecselis Intern
Elena Neila Havas Precision Manager
Concepción Martínez Havas Client Service Director
Irene Ruesga Havas Brand Account Manager
Víctor Sánchez Havas / DBi Product & Technology Director
Antonio Tajuelo Havas / DBi Client Services
Álvaro Guijarro Havas / DBi Client Services
Raquel López Havas / DBi Business Developer
Alfonso Sánchez Havas / DBi Client Services

Why is this work relevant for Innovation?

The Dealer Coop Platform (DCP) is truly innovative because it allows Kia to initiate the movement towards digital transformation within a sector known for being old school and resisting digitalization. Most dealers were investing an important part of their advertising budget in traditional advertising channels with little or no ROI. This system introduced the dealers to digital advertising gradually and easily. The DCP allowed KIA to better control the advertising budget sent to the dealers. The platform effectively turned our ‘’Non-Techie Dealers’’ into display advertising / AdWords / Google Display Networks (GDN) Experts.

Background

97% of Spaniards turn to the internet first before they buy a car. 78% of them use a smartphone to search for information and 29% find their car thanks to the internet. These facts were in contrast with the way the Kia dealers in Spain were spending their advertising money. Whereas the specialized marketing teams at head offices managed by the central marketing teams were mostly conducting digital campaigns, the dealers were at the other end of the advertising spectrum. Each dealer receives its own advertising budget and up until this campaign, they could spend it as they saw fit. This was problematic because dealers favorited traditional forms of advertising, no surprise there, as many dealerships have very little digital knowledge, so they invested massively in traditional advertising channels with little or no ROI. 90% of their budget was spent in channels that offered no possibility of monitorization or optimization.

Describe the idea

The creative idea came with a very necessary question: ‘’How can we turn old school car salesmen into GDN experts?’’ We used technology to facilitate this introduction. We got into the sales person persona and asked ourselves what it would be like to not know anything about display advertising or search. This creative process allowed us to develop a tool that was immediately well received by the dealers. Our goals were: - Increase KIA dealer’s web traffic and optimize digital ad campaigns. - Increase KIA dealer’s showroom traffic by maximizing the conversion rate from impression to physical visits and commercial offers Once the platform was created and tested, we embarked in a country wide training operation. We visited each of the dealers and trained their employees on the DCP. We created manuals and formed dedicated team to manage the subsequent questions. Dealers could reach us through a specific help line.

What were the key dates in the development process?

• April 2018: client service, DBi and Ecselis team did a brainstorming to develop the proyect and create the platform. • May 2018: o Production team creates the first beta version of Creative platform. o Production team creates the first beta version of Automatic budget platform. o Digital specialist team define the right segmentation for GDN campaigns in Google Ads. • June 2018: o Uploaded the assets in order to create the ads in Creative platform. o Dealers specified its favorite ads selecting the most meaningful creative assets in Creative platform. • July 2018: Team started running the GDN campaigns.

Describe the innovation / technology

The DCP is a system that allows the client, KIA, the dealers and the agency to collaborate in the management of GDN campaigns, from custom Ads creation to media implementation and campaign results reporting. This is how the platform worked: • 100% of the campaigns were on mobile devices so we could geolocate users precisely. If the user had searched for keywords related to buying a car and was inside a dealer geographical area, he would be served the ad. • The creative agency would design the creative assets and include them into the platform. • Dealers could personalize their campaigns by selecting the creatives based on the vehicles they wanted to promote, they could also select the message and the CTA’s. • Ads were segmented by postal code and all ads appeared with the dealers’ name and their own URL’s that lead to specific landing pages. • The Media Agency would then use GDN to adapt the creatives to the format of each web where the creative was served, and they constantly optimized the campaign according to the results. • The Media agency would produce the reports that where uploaded on to the DCP, available to each dealer.

Describe the expectations / outcome

- We increased impressions of our campaigns by 166% (served vs planned) - We increased clicks by 195% - CTR increased by 117% - CPC was reduced by 55% - During the third trimester, thanks to the 55% reduction in CPC, we double the initial website traffic increase objective by 95%. - We dramatically improved the conversion rate from impression to dealership physical visits and commercial proposals: The campaign generated more than 10K visits, this represented 38% of all commercial offers by our sales team to potential clients. - The DCP allowed to increase operational efficiency, more precisely employee efficiency. The platform allowed us manage a complex campaign with multiple creative assets used by 81 dealers with less people than if we did not have the platform.