Brochures: Driving Automobile Sales for Nearly a Century
Did Americans buy cars before there were brochures to persuade them to do so? Apparently not.
In 1903, fledgling Ford Motor Co. sent out the first of a flock of sales booklets targeted to doctors, salesmen and lawyers.
David L. Lewis, professor of business history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the pioneering auto manufacturer’s earliest brochures touted the benefits of the coupe.
“Small and nimble and economical, it would get you up and down country roads,” Lewis said, echoing Ford’s marketing pitch, which conjures up a vanished era of doctors’ house calls and door-to-door salesmen (not to mention lawyers with modest yearly earnings). “It would be economical to buy and economical to operate.”
The brochures included testimonials from professional men who wrote in to say how wonderful it was to exchange a horse and buggy for a Ford product. When the Model T came out in 1908, a new series of booklets targeted taxicab companies, motor freight firms and what was then called “the feminine trade.”
Other pamphlets, translated into several languages for worldwide distribution, were devoted to such topics as the Ford factory or the type of steel used in Model Ts. More testimonials larded the pages of Ford Times, a magazine published between 1908 and 1917 for dealers to give to customers.
Nearly a century later, the automotive brochure continues to be an effective sales tool. In a 1999 study of 40,000 U.S. car and truck buyers conducted by Tustin-based AutoPacific Inc., 21.2% cited vehicle brochures as important sources of information in making a decision on a new car, just behind the presumably less-biased consumer magazines (23.4%).
The best source of information, a no-brainer, was personal experience (45.6%).
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What’s the next new thing in the car brochure world? Microsoft CarPoint, an Internet site for car owners and buyers, is touting interactive digital brochures.
Introduced last year to underwhelming manufacturer response (only Isuzu is currently part of the program), it provides consumers little more (aside from comparisons with competing brands, a preliminary estimated manufacturer’s suggested retail price and a speedy price quote from your local dealer) than the printed variety.
But in coming months the site will offer brief videos of new cars and trucks in motion and interactive features that will allow buyers to see their favorite models in their favorite colors or answer safety questions in terms of their specific needs. One feature CarPoint is particularly proud of, Publisher Mark E. Hickling said, is the digital brochure’s potential for moving buyers “from [brand] awareness to consideration to purchase intent, and get that process going.”
In other words, a brochure you click on can glide you directly to an online decision to buy. There’s no need to pick up the phone or visit the dealership. Unless, of course, you have an old-fashioned hankering for a test-drive.
