Marketing Volvo at the Auto Show

This year’s Volvo booth was hidden in the northeastern corner of the IX Center. At first you might think that would be the worst possible location. But on second thought, it turned out to be a good place as it was nestled in between Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. Not bad, eh? With all the traffic those two brands pulled in, it was easy to talk with a steady stream of people throughout the day.

But when we ran out of brochures to hand out, we were faced with a dilemma. A lot of time people (or children) pick up brochures and never read them. Should we waste money just to make the brand look good or would there be a better way to get the message across without an exorbitant amount of money being invested?

I decided to distribute a double-sided sheet of paper with my “Why Volvo?” article on it. At the beginning of the article, it says, “Don’t buy a Volvo…”. If you continue reading, you’ll see that each main point continues the thought with and “if.” For instance, Don’t buy a Volvo … if you don’t care about safety. I thought this was a clever way of projecting the core values of the Volvo brand to those visiting our booth.

However, one of our salesmen has several people who didn’t finish reading the article. All they saw was the first line. So, they asked why someone was telling people not to buy Volvos. Now, my first instinct is to scream, “Read the rest of the article, dingbat!” But the salesman had a point. What was supposed to be a clever way of getting a point across was turning some people away from the brand.

Hmm… maybe we should just bring some brochures next year. 🙁