Porsche Goes Mobile

Porsche’s recent mobile marketing venture appeared bold being that Porsche demographic is middle age man and mobile skews young. Surprisingly, it ended up paying off. The click-through rate of the campaign was six times better than online display advertising. Mobile generated three times the volume to Porsche’s call center than online, and twice as many dealer look-ups. The mobile site logged 40% higher visit rates to the model-pricing sections, compared to online. The carmaker used Yahoo behavioral targeting tools to serve Porsche ads to Smartphone users whose web-surfing behaviors had indicated they were in the market for coupes, SUVs, convertibles or luxury cars.

This news was surprising to me to say the least. That so many people have the time and patience to click through to ads on their phones is surprising. After a little bit of research, I found that many luxury brands have been experimenting in the mobile space. Land Rover, Merecedes and Ford have all had mobile campaigns in the last year. However no one has reported the success that Porsche has recently experienced. After much contemplation, I think this surge in mobile marketing must be due to the fact that more and more higher end consumers have phones with rich digital capabilities – such as the I-Phone- with which browsing the internet has become a much easier experience. It is clear that automotive companies targeting mature buyers have to be careful before they shun emerging media channels. Consumers are on the go more than ever, and it is inevitable that their attention is moving away from stationary channels and towards portable ones.