In a marketing world increasingly defined by short-termism, thinking long-term has never been more important. When it comes to media behaviours and planning, Jaguar Land Rover New Zealand is well quipped for the long journey ahead. This, thanks to a partnership with Together which has seen these luxury brands test and evolve their digital media and marketing strategies long-term.
Luke Meurant Head of Marketing at Jaguar Land Rover New Zealand talks media partnerships, behaviours, targeting and attribution in the current marketing cliamte.
What’s LRJ current marketing strategy in New Zealand?
We have distinct challenges with each brand.
With Land Rover we have an iconic brand that has no trouble with brand awareness as a SUV manufacturer but often suffers from its heritage in terms of more vintage associations. This is especially problematic for a product set that leads the market with regard to the technology it delivers. Our strategy therefore seeks to Re-establish Land Rover.
Jaguar have produced two of the last last World Cars of the Year and as a result is seen as a brand on the move from new car considerers. However, with limited SOV relative to the competitive set, Jaguar is not often on the shopping list for new car considerers. This brand therefore needs to do a ‘lot more with a lot less’ and so we seek to Challenge For Attention with this brand.
How does this differ with each brand?
For Land Rover this means we must find opportunities for the market to spend more time with (in) vehicles and repositioning ourselves alongside more contemporary themes. This translates to more mid-funnel marketing communications activities such as experiential and content, but it also translates to the types of media we select such as high engagement formats like Facebook Experiences (as examples).
By virtue of the changing product set that Jaguar is delivering we are fast shedding the more traditional associations. However, as the brand is still somewhat niche we need to deploy more top-of-funnel marketing activities
Do you have both short- and long-term strategic objectives for the brands?
Absolutely. Our customers aren’t only the end users (drivers) of our products, we also serve dealerships/retailers as our primary customers. To ensure we are delivering short term outcomes for them we need to deliver the basics of retail marketing brilliantly. We’re doing that through data-driven digital excellence and a tight focus on short term attribution from user actions online to dealership visitation and purchase, seen in monthly sales targets. We’re also nurturing long term brand health to increase the effectiveness of that retail activity and make tomorrow’s sales easier. For end users we also deliver a brand experience through our products and service so we need to play in longer term brand building/brand support space for them too. We monitor progress against these longer term goals through awareness, consideration and brand attribute tracking.
While short-termism has it place (take for instance the recent Covid pandemic), why is long-term marketing so important?
For us the fundamentals of good marketing involve balancing the short and long term needs of the business. We talk a lot about brand work assisting in making sales tomorrow while well-coordinated and well executed retail activity makes us sales today.
Over the last 18 months we have needed to shift our focus very quickly from one type of activity to another as Covid19 has closed and re-opened dealerships sporadically and made our supply chain ‘lumpy’. As we have always had a variable cost approach to marketing (i.e. fewer long term contracts or retainers) we have been able to dial up and dial back activity as required.
How has the long-term strategy translated into your media planning?
We build all our plans against both nurture and conversion goals, with media planning and tactics optimised against both. We have also developed a select number of ongoing media and data partnerships that have allowed us to deliver on both short term and long term needs. For example our partnership with NZME has provided us strong retail opportunities through the likes of radio and data use, while content opportunities afford us the ability to deliver longer term brand coverage. As a rule, we asses partnership opportunities on their ability to deliver both outcomes. This is particularly important when selling ideas internally, in an environment driven largely by short term sales results.
How has Together helped you achieve this?
Together’s responsibilities here are two-fold:
- As media and market experts Together allow us to better understand the wider environment and true media values relative to our business needs. This means that they can negotiate with clear direction on the value we place on each opportunity/campaign or for our longer term marketing strategy.
- We lean on Together to assist us in balancing both types of objectives to ensure our mix is right. This has been a significant challenge over the last 18 months in particular as the macro environmental factors have been significantly shifting. Their leadership on aspects such as attribution, data partnerships and Google Cloud Platform has been crucial in improving our conversion activity, while their collaborative and creative approach to nurture media planning has seen our brands gain an unfair share of attention through multiple new formats, many of which have been NZ firsts.
Can you talk to the media partnerships/ behaviours and targeting you have used?
Together have established some critical data partnerships for us. We are now doing some clever things with Equifax as well as custom modelling with NZME and making smart use of Google’s Cloud Platform.
Both Grand Designs and Land Rover 1stXV Rugby sponsorships are great examples of how we can achieve both long- and short-term goals within the same partnership. Land Rover 1stXV Rugby allows us the ability to connect at a brand level through broadcast sponsorship across NZME, SkyTV and NZ Rugby World while showcasing particular elements of the vehicles and delivering brand statements within magazine style editorial features. This also extends to retail ad placements within each media. Grand Designs also plays a similar role but within one single programme – a world first in terms of product placement within that particular international programme.
What have you learned from working with Together?
We have learned a number of things, but the highlights are:
- The value of a more strategically-focused partnership that’s more than simply media buying. Yes, the team at Together can negotiate rates but their strategic input is the fundamental differentiator for them as business partners.
- We have truly established our agency partner as an extension of our marketing team. In the past I had been sceptical of agencies pitching this as an idea but to see it actually playing out has been incredibly enlightening and hugely beneficial.
In association with Together.
