Porsche mobile effort outperforms online display ads

By Giselle Abramovich

Porsche's mobile WAP site
Luxury automaker Porsche used mobile as part of a bigger, multichannel campaign to promote its luxury vehicles as affordable.
Porsche’s “I Can” campaign targeted mobile consumers on Weather.com and Yahoo and encouraged consumers to click on banner ads that said, “You can own one, click to see how” and “Can you afford a Porsche? Just say 'I can.'” The four-month-long mobile initiative is said to have outperformed Porsche's broader campaign.
“The overall strategy was to emphasize the affordability of Porsche products to people who didn’t think this car brand was in their reach,” said David Katz, vice president of mobile advertising and publisher services at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. “Porsche was trying to touch buyers on the go.” When consumers clicked-through, they arrived at the campaign’s WAP site at http://m.porscheusa.com/all/usa/ican. There they could view Porsche models and prices and click to call a dealer.
Porsche found that consumers clicked mostly over the weekend while out shopping or test-driving vehicles.

Otto mobile
The carmaker thought mobile would be a good fit because its buyers can be classified as technologically savvy.
"The objective of the 'I Can' campaign was to address misperceptions about the price of a Porsche and break down barriers to consideration," said Brian Mandelbaum, vice president and interactive group media director at Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago.
Cramer-Krasselt is Porsche’s ad agency.
The campaign was inspired by company research that shows that the majority of consumers believe that the car's price tag and ownership costs were higher than they really were.
The mobile initiative delivered 22 percent of the campaign’s overall digital traffic and the click-through rate was six times better than Porsche’s online display advertising.
Mobile generated three times the volume to Porsche's call center than online and twice as many dealer look-ups.
The mobile site’s number of visitors was 40 percent higher than those to the online site, it was also claimed.
Porsche used Yahoo behavioral targeting tools to serve ads to smartphone users whose Web-surfing behavior implied they were looking for coupes, sport utility vehicles or luxury cars.
The carmaker plans to relaunch the mobile campaign in the spring to promote the March debut of the new Cayman and Boxster models.
"Cramer-Krasselt developed an engagement strategy from the perspective of the active consumer, facilitating one-on-one dialogue through mobile," Mr. Mandelbaum said. "Not only are Porsche customers generally tech-savvy and connected, but from a lifestyle perspective, mobile is an ideal way to engage them.
"Porsche is all about front-of-foot engagement," he said. "The Porsche consumer is not someone who just plops on the couch and watches TV or curls up with a magazine everyday. They are far more active and demand more immediate access to information."
Porsche isn’t the only big brand that has seen results running ads on Yahoo’s mobile properties.
Visa wanted a multi-screen approach to promote its tie-in with the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Visa ran banner ads on Yahoo’s Mobile Olympic site. Ultimately, the goal of the campaign was to drive traffic to Visa’s mobile site at http://visa.mobi/goworld and engage users with a rich mobile experience through background stories on featured athletes.
Focus with a mobile marketing effort is key, as Yahoo tells advertisers.
“What I liked about this campaign is that Porsche came in with a clear objective and was really pushing affordability,” Yahoo's Mr. Katz said. “We thought they had simple, yet relevant mobile experiences.”
“Porsche really took advantage of mobile in good ways and they made use of our Yahoo behavioral targeting tools,” he said. -->

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