| Avis and Ford Seek Loyalty with Loyalty |
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by Michael Wilke
Advertisers often mention the vaunted loyalty of the gay market, but few offer something back.
As they get more savvy about gay marketing, Avis Rent A Car and Ford Motor Co. are going beyond simple ad campaigns and offering incentives to lure more green from gay wallets, including shopping discounts and donations to community organizations.
Avis Rent A Car System, which entered the market in 2003, created the unique "A Card" last year to create value and brand awareness. The red-and-white card carries a special code for 10% discounts at TLA Video, 20% off gay magazine subscriptions, and more. It ties in with the ad campaign tagline, "You're A-list to us," touting that Avis doesn't charge extra for domestic partner drivers.
Over 1.5 million "A Cards" have been distributed in magazines, film festivals, and events, and they're used a lot. TLA Video enjoyed nearly $300,000 in sales from its relationship to the card in 2004.
Avis Supports Gay Film Festivals
"What we were looking for was a platform to create a relationship with the customer," explains Scott Deaver, executive VP of marketing for Cendent Car Rental Group, which owns Avis and Budget Rent A Car. "In the wider world, we're realistic and know that it's not the highest interest category, people don't break a sweat over it. That's not a great platform to build a relationship on, so we asked our ad agency to pick something that people think about more often than car rental, like entertainment."
Thus, since 2003 Avis has directly supported gay film festivals across the country. Since the card requires no registration, to create a database and communicate directly with card holders, Avis has launched a sweepstakes for a "VIP Festival Pass" trip to the 2006 gay film festivals in Miami, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Avis also tracks traffic to http://www.avis.com/prouder to determine the effectiveness of its campaign. "A lot of corporate advertisers don't even have a dedicated page to the community," notes Jay Arnold, president of Impax marketing, Philadelphia, which handles the Avis gay market account.
Avis also tried a donation program, where $1 for every reported rental went to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in 2003, but it failed since few people filled out paperwork for the low donation.
It is fortunate Avis is well established in the market, since its bigger rival, The Hertz Corp., quietly arrived this year too. However, Hertz has not yet created dedicated ads or initiated a presence at major events.
Ford Motor Brands' Giveback Offers to HRC, GLAAD
Initiating its own program, Ford Motor Co. began introducing its brands Jaguar, Volvo, and Land Rover in a series roughly every six months starting in January 2003. (Ford has not yet brought its own brand name out, and as yet there is no indication when it will.)
Building on a new sponsorship of the Human Rights Campaign, Jaguar began an annual giveback purchase offer program with $1,000 donations going to HRC for a purchase or lease. Less than a year later, it was followed by Volvo with $500 donations, then a few months later Land Rover was added, at $1,000 a sale. Last year, the brands switched donations for Volvo and Land Rover to GLAAD, and Volvo remained with HRC.
"The program is based on what GLBT people tell us they're looking for -- companies that support us," says John Butler senior strategist at Witeck-Combs Communications, the Washington D.C. firm that handles Ford's gay marketing.
The cars' price differences reflect the donation sizes, something Witeck-Combs tested with focus groups. "We had to figure out what amount does it take to get consumers to do something?" says Butler, noting the failure of the Avis $1 to GLAAD effort.
The program is working well. A Ford source reports that 2004 represented nearly three times as many redemptions over 2003, and that Volvo has done best of the brands. Both HRC and GLAAD report positive results. The idea is working so well that Ford and HRC are now exploring ways to apply the idea outside of their relationship.
Butler says the ability to measure market response is particularly relevant in the face of pressure from a recent evangelical boycott threat against Ford. "I felt like we had a little jump of people turning in their purchase promotions" by supportive lesbians and gays in response to the threat, Butler says.
A recent survey of 697 CommercialCloset.org visitors, asked what they do when gay-friendly companies are boycotted, found that most claimed to support the company with purchases, 65%. Another 21.8% said they simply cursed fundamentalists, while just 13.2% said they bothered to call or write to the targeted company with support.
As competitors crowd in, and evangelicals attack, advertisers have a strong interest in creating trackable campaigns that shows the fruits of their efforts, while also giving back to the community. After all, loyalty is the best way to earn loyalty.\n
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