Marketing exec: Time to tell Cox's story is now

Ken Kraft has been Cox Automotive's chief marketing officer for just over a year, having moved into the role in February 2021.

The former telecommunications executive — before Cox Automotive, he was senior vice president of marketing and sales operations at Cox Business, the Cox Communications unit that focuses on commercial customers — joined the Atlanta-based dealership technology company as it has placed a focus on its digital products, data intelligence capabilities and its mobility division.

Kraft said he intends to focus on telling Cox's story in four key ways:

1. Marketing Cox Automotive as a brand, rather than as a collection of individual brands.

2. Digital retailing that transforms automotive retail.

3. Bringing younger shoppers to its Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book research sites.

4. Promoting itself as an employer of choice to attract talent.

The company recently introduced DRiVEQ, a new branding initiative for all of the data Cox collects from vehicle shoppers, from market intelligence and from vehicles themselves, such as inspection reports. The DRiVEQ brand and the data housed within it power Cox's technology tools.

Kraft, 60, spoke to Staff Reporter Lindsay VanHulle about data and the marketing strategies he's pursuing. Here are edited excerpts.

On its DRiVEQ brand and the importance of data:

Nobody has the amount of data that we have, and that is our superpower. And it's really allowed us to kind of make the customers' experience, the dealers' experience, better, faster and smarter. Now, why did we do DRiVEQ? I think it's important that we start to brand our data intelligence in order for us to kind of solidify all of what I just outlined and position us as really the undisputed market leader when it comes to data intelligence.

And formalizing the brand is important because it gives us a framework with which to communicate a lot of the things that I just shared as far as our market leadership. And so when partners and clients see DRiVEQ, our expectation and what we're working towards is that they should know that they're utilizing the industry's best solutions made possible only by Cox Automotive.

It's not a product. It is the fuel that powers all of the Cox Automotive solutions that we currently have.

I remember reading when I first came into this role that data is the new oil. And to me, this whole concept of what we're talking about relative to all of the data that we have is kind of the fuel. This is us starting to put our name and our stamp on the capabilities that we have and being a little bit more vocal in the marketplace that we are a technology leader. And the data that we have is really unmatched in the industry, given the assets and the brands that we have at our disposal.

On marketing the Cox Automotive brand:

We have some of the most powerful and respected brands and trusted brands in the industry. But we've never really associated or brought the Cox Automotive name, the parent, to market, and I'm really exploring that as I've come into this role. How should we be thinking about Cox Automotive as related to the brands that we have?

A big role of any marketer is storytelling. And, honestly, I don't think we've done a good [job] of telling our holistic capabilities, from when a consumer starts to think about buying a car all the way through to the purchase, and then the ongoing service and support that customer experiences. We have solutions across that entire spectrum. And we need to tell that story to our customer base, to our dealer community and to the OEMs.

We're launching a new division that is being called Cox Automotive Mobility, and there are four lines of business inside of that new division focused on fleet services, fleet operations, EV battery solutions and kind of emerging ventures. But all of that was created inorganically through a lot of strategic acquisitions over the last several years. We really had a blank piece of paper. And how should we think about Cox Automotive, all of these brands we just acquired, as we stand up this new mobility division? And it presents us an opportunity to change the way we go to market, and we've chosen to lead with Cox Automotive as opposed to a lot of individual brands.

Cox Automotive obviously was also built through the years with a number of acquisitions of very powerful brands, so that opportunity exists on the Cox Automotive side, but it's not a blank sheet of paper. It's one that requires a lot of thought and respect relative to what we've accomplished as a company and what those brands represent today.

On marketing to younger audiences:

We have some of the most respected and trusted brands on the consumer side with Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. But we do have a marketing challenge there in increasing awareness with younger audiences, specifically millennials.

They're all mostly digital natives, so we have got to think differently about our media mix, our messaging that would resonate with millennials. We launched a new kbb.com campaign called "kbb.com It." And it really is showing consumers how KBB solves all of "it," all the "it" in car shopping and buying — pricing it, trading it, servicing it and more.