Online tool lets Chevrolet dealers tap national promotions
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DETROIT -- With the Super Bowl happening a mere 15 miles from his dealership, Rex Phillips wanted to tie a promotion to the big game. He got one by barely lifting a finger.
The operations director at Stanley Chevrolet outside Indianapolis took advantage of a new offering from Chevrolet that allows him to plop a national Chevy Super Bowl promotion right on the dealership's Facebook page.
It's a new tool General Motors is using to help dealers ride the coattails of their brands' Tier 1 advertising plays. GM says all of its 3,100 Chevy dealers were offered the tool, which is provided by Promoboxx Inc. of Boston.
"We don't stay on top of the Facebook page like we should," Phillips says. "This is an easy way to keep it fresh and offer something of real value."
The tie-in to the Chevy promotion is probably more appealing to visitors than the typical below-invoice sale that might normally reside on the store's Facebook page, Phillips says. Chevy is offering a mobile app that gives Super Bowl viewers chances to win one of 20 Chevys or other prizes -- everything from a Papa John's pizza to a Motorola phone.
The Chevy app will let Super Bowl viewers compete with other users on trivia questions and surveys related to the game and the commercials, for example.
Users of the Chevy app will receive a unique "license plate" number on their device. Numbers that match a plate that appears in a Chevy spot during the game will win a new vehicle. Chevy also will dole out thousands of instant-win prizes during the game.
For his dealership to participate, Phillips simply filled out an online form with some dealership information. That customizes the promotion so it appears as if it's being offered straight from the dealership, says Andrew Dinsdale, assistant director of digital and customer relationship management for Chevrolet.
"It looks like it's the dealer who is delivering the value proposition to their customers," Dinsdale says.
The Super Bowl app is a pilot of sorts. Dinsdale expects future use of Promoboxx to sync dealers' Facebook pages to Chevy's national marketing campaigns. "It really gives us another channel to collaborate with our dealers on localizing some of our Tier 1 work online."
You can reach Mike Colias at mcolias@crain.com.
