The automotive industry --- and the world --- have changed.
Dramatically. Quickly. Forever.
But give us just a few moments of your time, and, afterwards, we think you'll contact us to ask some questions, tell us why we're wrong or just shoot the breeze and talk about our (and yours) favorite topic: "cars."
Keeping your company's products, both existing and new, relevant to the realities of today's buyers worldwide is your most-important, never-ending challenge.
With the world economy in recession, and experts telling us it will not improve for at least two years, now is the time to be bold, to charge into the fray, to take-on the marketplace and grow and win!
We’ve been in the automotive journalism business for over 35 years, as a freelance journalist, magazine and newspaper columnist and editor, nationally-syndicated author, radio and television producer and host, marketing and public relations specialist, speaker and consultant.
Currently we supply, on a near-daily basis, news and opinion for our own heavily-trafficked website, www.SteveParker.com and several other very busy sites, including having created and now writing and moderating the only automotive section on the well-known Huffington Post (www.HuffingtonPost.com/steve-parker), one of the world leaders in website visitors, consulting for the NBC-TV automotive show Whipnotic and having our work posted on the show’s companion website, www.Whipnotic.com and writing a column each week for the Santa Monica Daily Press newspaper and their website, www.SMDP.com. Our national radio show, American Racing Today, is a daily two-minute NASCAR-oriented news update which we’ve written, hosted and produced for over 15 years.
Now that you know a bit about us, here’s how we may very well be able to work with and help your company:
When economic problems hit, the great companies historically don’t cut-back or stop their marketing and advertising – they increase those efforts, but they do it in smarter ways then they did in “normal” times.
For example, during WWII, gelatin was necessary for many items for the war effort, therefore, Jell-o was not available to the public during the war years. But, Jell-o never stopped advertising their products. When the war ended, there was such a tremendous pent-up demand for Jell-o that the company nearly closed because of the overwhelming public demand their products.
Answers for your company's particular challenge will be found in our decades of experience in the OEM and aftermarket car, truck and motorcycle industries.
Is your company developing and/or making products for the burgeoning green market? Our consultancy can help you “find the green” in your existing product line --- and how to “find the green” from customers, too.
Now and into the future, only companies which set-out to be green, or turn green with existing products and make a commitment to keep moving in that direction, will enjoy great success.
You may already make or sell green products, but don’t recognize it. Often business owners and management staff are so close to their products and the vagaries of day-to-day business that it’s difficult to imagine other uses for existing products or customer needs for new, green products which their companies could fulfill.
We’ll look at your product line, learn your company’s capabilities, and either find green products in your product line, or offer counsel on developing green products which you may be able to make – right now! – without the months and even years it can take to create new products.
Several companies at the recent 2008 SEMA Show aftermarket exhibition in Las Vegas displayed existing products, products they’d made for years, but which they only recently recognized as right for the green market, and that was their successful pitch to the tens of thousands of buyers walking the SEMA Show’s seven miles of aisles.
Just as we found at the SEMA Show, at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show, we saw scores of products originally developed for the performance and/or appearance markets, and which are now also aimed at the already-huge and growing worldwide green marketplace.
We’ve attended both SEMA and the Tokyo Motor Show for well over two decades, and based on those recent visits, and our annual forays to the Los Angeles Auto Show, Detroit Auto Show and other important industry confabs, “green” is the byword in auto products, part of the “price of admission” every product today must pay to successfully enter (and rule) the marketplace.
In the car, truck and motorcycle world today, every company --- whether a huge multi-national making thousand of parts and products, two people fixing aluminum wheels in a garage or even one person with an idea or concept for something new --- must become part of the green revolution to succeed.
Perhaps one of you products can help America escape the clutches of oil-rich foreign countries.
Here’s how we help you:
- Learn about your company, your products, your capabilities, your growth plans and your audience;
- Identify your existing products which have green potential;
- Develop new green products using your existing expertise;
- Determining if your PR, marketing and advertising should be "preaching to the enthusiast choir" or reaching the massive general-interest marketplace, or both, and,
- Perhaps most important, show how your company can make the best use of today's huge media opportunities, both electronic and traditional.
And all this can be achieved without your having to add staff or put an entire advertising, PR or marketing agency on a monthly-retainer.
Here are just some of the projects we’ve completed:
- Consultant to Renault/Nissan for a new sports car being considered for the US market;
- Planning, staging and documenting, for readers of the world's largest car magazine (six million subscribers), the Bonneville Land Speed Record-setting efforts of one of the world's best-known aftermarket performance companies and classic Detroit iron;
- Writing and on-camera hosting of car-maker industrial videos used in national sales training and product marketing;
- Developing, creating and staging, twice, for the world's largest motorhome and travel-trailer owners’ group (over three million strong), their participation in The Great American Race, an annual coast-to-coast time/speed/distance rally traveling America's back roads in antique cars and trucks;
- Ghostwriting the best-selling autobiography of the so-called Godfather of the 1964 Pontiac GTO;
- Creating, selling and hosting the first-ever automotive news consumer segments on a regularly-scheduled TV newscast, first in Los Angeles, then nationally, including on TV stations in 27 of the Top 50 US markets;
- Creating, producing and hosting the first automotive-oriented national radio show on a commercial network;
- Planning and managing the first-time executive visits of a top US auto industry consultancy to the Tokyo Motor Show;
- Producing, planning, writing and on-camera hosting American-based segments of Granada Television's "The Motor Show," one of the world's most-popular automotive TV programs, produced for and in the UK;
- Developing consumer-oriented "Ride and Drive" and other owner affinity programs for some of the world's biggest car-makers (and their advertising, marketing and public relations agencies);
- Writing and publishing the 100-page full-color event catalog for the first Mickey Thompson Off-Road Championship Grand Prix race at the Los Angeles Coliseum, all the way back in 1979;
- And, as they always say, much, much more.
We're long-time members of SAE, the Society of Automotive Engineers, SAH, the Society of Automotive Historians, CCCA, the Classic Car Club of America, AACA, the Antique Automobile Club of America, and SEMA, the Specialty Equipment Market Association, AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, plus several motor racing organizations. We've been honored with two Los Angeles-area television Emmy Awards (for automotive reporting at both KTLA/TV5 and KCBS/TV2) and a Member Service Award from SAE.
Click here to send us an email. Let’s discuss your company's unique green opportunities and how Steve Parker Consulting can help turn them into real $green$.
Thank you for your time.
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