By Todd Ramsey

I think it’s pretty clear by the reactions from retailers to the 12-Volt Initiative’s announcement in our recent Mobile Electronics interview to move forward with a second outreach effort that there’s quite a divide in how each group in the industry sees itself (retailing versus manufacturing). Within that divide, I also noticed a second split in what each believes is the most viable path to increase awareness of the industry. It’s a challenge we’re all vested in, though. It’s one in which we all have a stake that is certainly the fuel for the passionate counterpoint commentary by some of the industry’s most recognized 12-volt retailers.

 

Well I am going to state the obvious — there’s no silver bullet here. There never was, and there never will be. Oh how I wish there were. I think based on the retailer comments in Greg’s most recent article, it’s clear we’re all becoming more aware of that reality.

 

The fact is, nobody actually needs a darn thing we sell. Not really. We have to do a really good job of creating interest and then actually delivering something interesting when people make the effort to “look us up” (whether online or in person). We have to give people a reason to shop with us as an industry.

 

I agree with the retailers’ comments about the off-base and ineffective Car Dance Mob video and What UR Missin website that the 12-Volt Initiative’s efforts produced. Let me qualify that with the fact that, now at the age of 41, I also quickly admitted then — as I do now — that I am WAY outside that target demographic. I may not be the best person to make an assessment of how effective I THINK it would be so I deferred to youth of all ages to ask their take. Not one of them liked it either. More importantly, the ones who did look it over in detail told me “I don’t get it” or “I’m not sure what I am supposed to do.” Given that, even if there were connected dots and a retailer locator pointing people to ANY retailer as there was, it was so watered down in trying to be brand agnostic that it ended up being, in my opinion, unclear about anything — including the categories on the website that followed the video. Manufacturers who participated — go ahead and hate me if you must. I just didn’t get it and still don’t.

 

Boy would I have liked to see that money spent in other ways that was more inclusive of industry participation and spent on multiple approaches — each with its own set of trial metrics. I think the retailers who commented in Greg’s article cited many great ways to consider spending additional money that would involve more industry people, even some enthusiastic consumers.

 

In any case, here is the sad reality that all of us need to face. Even if the 12 Volt Initiative’s maiden voyage had been successful in driving some measurable amount of people into stores for “purchase consideration” as it was called, what is the likelihood of those prospective customer visits resulting in a GREAT consumer experience?

 

Now think about that in a broad sense across all of the possible retail 12-volt venues (large, small and online) and ask yourself how likely is a consumer to have a great experience with our products and services in an easy-to-understand and trouble-free way as things are right now, today?

 

If you are being honest with yourself, you’d admit — as I have — that it’s a convoluted maze of anywhere from great to disaster with a lot of mediocre in between. As an industry, we could all be doing a better job of giving customers a reason to open their minds and wallets to our products and, more importantly, the services we CAN offer them — many of whom have no idea of what we CAN do.

 

The 12 Volt Initiative will never be truly successful, even if they come up with a hip marketing campaign that everyone likes, until it’s able to effectively help retailers create a great experience at the majority of 12-volt retailers nationwide. If you think about it, this business of holding next to nothing in inventory for the smaller retailers, having no showrooms OR demo cars to deliver some kind of in-person experience, the fact that so many independent retailers are without even so much as a website, the larger big box retailers having no dedicated, customer-facing sales people or product experts, online retailers peddling a mix of authorized and unauthorized goods…, these are all things that contribute to the limitations we have as an industry right now to deliver, on any given day, a great in-person experience to prospective customers.

 

If we get into the whole mess of defective products, many of which are not really even defective in the end, we add another layer of secret sauce to a burger many consumers are simply not interested in eating. It’s too complicated and often comes with a risk of wasting the consumer’s valuable time. We can do so much better on delivering what we promise.

 

Where are my encouraging words in all this? We need more retailers of all sizes delivering on their promise and providing consumers with great solutions for their aftermarket 12-volt electronic needs, even if the consumer isn’t entirely certain what their needs are or what’s available to them. Although there are many fantastic independents out there, there are many more that are treading water at best. The medium and larger retailers also could be doing more to implement broad-reaching awareness of solutions (rather than just products) they can offer.

 

As I said in my speech at the recent Mobile Electronics Magazine Industry Awards during MERA’s KnowledgeFest last week, we need to be Technology Ambassadors. Every one of us needs to walk the walk for the talk we are talking and share what’s cool, exciting, entertaining, safe and productive with people who may have a limited understanding of what we do.

 

Any 12 Volt Initiative should be inclusive of the whole industry if it’s ever expected to bring results that people in our business will recognize. In fact, I believe the positive result won’t be any marketing or advertising campaign, but rather it’ll be the rewards that our individual efforts combine to make the machine run better. The sum of the parts is much more powerful than any one piece of our industry individually. I believe that’s our ultimate path to a better 12 Volt Awareness Campaign.

 

Time for a gut check as an industry! Where do we want to be in a year or two? How about in five years?

 

What do you think? Let’s hear your comments and suggestions about how we can move ahead, not how we can rehash the past!