Nice video from the other car2go

In this case, it's from the original car2go is Tel Aviv, Israel.

Doing an original video, especially on a (relative) shoe-string, is always a challenge.  This is a nice use of a  different form of animation than is mostly commonly seen.   The images alone do a very nice job of explaining what carsharing is - and, if I spoke Hebrew, probably the words do too.  I'd certainly nominate this video my Best Carsharing Video of 2011.  Nice job.



A close runner for the best CS video up in my mind is this one from the other car2go - Daimler's.  This one is more atmospheric but has some nice touches.  And the "I love this town" theme (in English no less) is a brilliant move.  I've been very impressed with car2go's success at becoming part of the various communities they've gone into - a tough act for most multinational corporations!

If you've got nominations for the Best Carsharing Video of the year, let me know.  Just post a comment below.  Thanks.

Rebranding in the Air

Several major carshares have rolled out new logos and names recently.  It's interesting to see the direction different companies have taken.

Modo, formerly Cooperative Auto Network, Vancouver, BC, Canada — The most complete design makeover, possibly in anticipation of the arrival of car2go.  What does Modo mean?  They say it’s a reference to modality, multi-modal, modern.  Very clean - I like it.

Hertz On Demand, formerly Connect by Hertz — Perhaps the most drastic make-over, taking the word carsharing out and tagging the service "Rent Spontaneously"; finally capitalizing on the signature yellow of the Hertz brand.  One can understand the strategic motivation to tie the service closer to the core brand and wouldn't be surprised if other rental companies follow suit.  Will blurring the distinction between car rental and car sharing make it more difficult to cities to partner for carsharing services?

U Haul Carshare, formerly U Carshare —  Now the name says exactly where its roots are.  (Perhaps they got tired of hearing everyone refer to it incorrectly, so may decided to change the name to what people where calling it already. Who knows?)  They've  moved beyond PT Cruisers and, thankfully, also moved beyond plastering a billboard's worth of advertising on the sides of their vehicles.  They've quietly expanded to 22 college campuses and one city (Salt Lake).

CommunAuto, Montreal — North America's oldest and probably the most profitable carshare has adopted a more streamlined logo.  All that and having the cheapest rates on the continent!  (Not sure if the 2 color design was intentionally making a pun - about being the
"un-auto"?)

Did I miss something?  Let me know by making a comment, below.

Car Free Diet Skeptics

If you haven't seen what the City of Arlington, Virginia has been doing the past 2 years with their clever Car Free Diet Skeptics promotion, then take a look.  It does everything right - addresses the issues of car ownership and use, uses social media, has high production values and provides some laughs along the way.  I think it's a brilliant move to include the word "skeptics" in the title.

The concept is simple: through a public voting process two skeptics are selected who are willing to go without their cars for 30 days.  They post updates of their experiences during the 30 days of the challenge and the "winner" gets free transportation for a year.   Carsharing is certainly part of the mix, but bicycles, transit and walking play the major roles.

Right now they're in the middle of this year's challenge.  You can get a sense of the entire process by watching season 1, including the individual participants posts and a very nicely produced summary video here.

Nice job City of Arlington.

Millennials Driving Less and Enjoying It More

I've mentioned before that the "younger generation" seems to be developing a different relationship to driving and car ownership than when I was growing up.  

Who better to find out more than Zipcar, which last fall commissioned a survey of 18-34 year olds (one of their sweet spots) and released a short Powerpoint on the results.

The survey of 1025 adults, including 287 Millenials found that:

• 54% reported they "sometimes choose to spend time with friends online instead of driving"
• 45% "consciously made an effort to reduce how much I drive"
• 67% said "If there were more options in my area, such as public transportation, carsharing or convenient carpooling, I would drive less than I do now"
• 80% "somewhat" or "strongly agreed" that the high cost of car ownership is making it difficult to own a car

The survey reminded us that Millenials have been hit hard by the recession (although they didn't distinguish how hard hip, urban professionals were affected) and that as a group they were already in debt from school.

The survey was picked up by a couple a couple of writers, the best being by free-lancer Jim Montavalli, who wrote a very nice column Why Facebook is better than driving and recycled it several places.  Montavalli was skeptical that this is actually good for Zipcar and, even after talking to Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith seems to not understand that the less you drive (your own car) the more attractive borrowing a carsharing vehicle becomes.

Of course, Millenials, also called Gen Y, are a hot topic in the automotive and probably just about every other industry.  MillienialMarketing.com had a good overview of the research - "What's Not in a Millenial's shopping cart - a car".   BrandChannel writer Sheila Shayan interviewed Ford Motor Company's Sheryl Connelly, manager global trends and futuring,

• "I don't think the car symbolizes freedom to Gen Y to the extent it did baby boomers, or to a lesser extent, Gen X-ers. [Digital technology] allows teens to transcend time and place so they can feel connected to their friends virtually… we also understand the context in which they use cars has changed. ... It has nothing to do with performance or getting you from point A to point B. It's just a change in what people expect to be delivered." 

Of course, for the time being, this is perhaps primarily a delay in purchase, not an overall reduction.  But I certainly expect the overall number of cars in the US will continue to decline.

An idea for promoting new vehicle locations

BMW Mini has always had very creative marketing. And they've had to - building a small car in an age of much larger ones - and with a (more or less) one model line-up. From the early series of numbered slogans emphasizing the fun and virtues of driving a small car to a very clever Mini on a stand with a coin slot, as if it were a child's horseback ride in a supermarket. They've usually had just the right balance of humor and positioning that I admired and advocated.

Now here's another clever idea, and another one that carshares (with a bit of budget) could use to promote new vehicle locations - placing a VERY large cardboard box with the image of the vehicle on the side.  The Mini "box" is set up as if it were a present that had just been opened.

What a perfect way to announce a new carsharing vehicle location - that is, before you have a vehicle to go there!

This Mini promotion is from the Netherlands but apparently, it's taken from an earlier RATP Metro promotion in Paris.

These ideas are from an interesting blog Creative Criminals, which also has a link to a YouTube video of the Mini box.  Thanks for sharing.

Is Our Love Affair With Cars Cooling?

A recent article entitled "Rebel without a car" that appeared in the Los Angeles Times Business section on Oct. 9, 2009 indicates that a shift in attitudes is beginning to happen in the USA, at least among the younger generation.

The article, reported by Martin Zimmerman, cites a J.D. Power and Associates market research report that:

"Online discussions by teens indicate shifts in perceptions regarding the necessity of and desire to own cars." Part of the reason, the article says is that during the current recession "the cost of owning a car probably makes less sense than it did when gas was 30¢ per gallon..." The report suggests that, "with the advent of social media and other forms of electronic communities, teens perceive less of a need to physically congregate and less of a need for a mode of transportation."

The analysis focused on teens, ages 12-18, and "early careerists", ages 22-29. The change in was identified from monitoring hundreds of thousands of auto-related websites, blogs, and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

The comments about the article on the LA Times blogsite were also interesting.

Hertz Connect Rolling Out New Cities

The new carshare on the street, Connect By Hertz, is showing it means business. After the initial launch in Manhattan, London and Paris, Connect spent some time getting their feet on the ground. But they were busy in the spring and by this summer Connect had expanded their New York fleet to over 400 hundred vehicles - competing in Zipcar's sweetest neighborhoods all over Manhattan. The growth was facilitated by their partnership with Icon Parking, Connect now has locations from the tip of Manhattan up to East and West 90th Streets. In comparison Zip has over 2000 vehicles in several boroughs and adjacent New Jersey communities).

A recent check of the Hertz Connect web site now lists Boston, Chicago, Washington DC and San Francisco, each with one location with several vehicles. In Chicago, for example, the downtown Loop location has 4 vehicles - 2 Priuses, a Ford Escape SUV and a Camry. (The Washington DC location is at Marriot hotel corporate headquarters and could be laying the groundwork for a very interesting partnership.) Oddly Denver isn't one of the cities listed, although the Spire condo project there indicates they'll be offering residents Connect services. That would make Denver the city with the most carsharing services right now - E-Go (Boulder Carshare), Occasional Car (a recent start up with 2 vehicles) and Hertz Connect.

And Connect has added a couple of college/university campuses to its list - having taken them away from Zipcar. These are naturals for Connect since Hertz likely has a branch in the town so adding carsharing is a piece of cake.

But exactly how they're achieving this growth is a bit of a mystery - since they don't seem to be using any of the traditional marketing approaches - transit advertising, media trade outs, etc. They have done some interesting awareness campaigns using Go Gorilla Media including sidewalk logo projections, sidewalk stenciling (is that legal?) and fake "lost dog" signs (the tear offs give the Hertz Connect web site).
Hertz Connect is going after a somewhat different customer demographic - offering more vehicles on the upscale end. In addition to a Mini or a Prius at just about every location, and the usual assortment of Mazda 3s and Toyota Yaris, there are many Camrys and some locations have Volvo C70s and even a Mercedes GLK 350!

Hertz Connect is being helped in NYC by Zipcar's on-going problems with customer service. The Zipcar call center can be infuriating (I know from experience) and fleet maintenance in NYC (and other cities) apparently leaves a LOT to be desired - read a bunch of uphappy Zipcar members complaining (and very few members complimenting) on Yelp.

The London and Paris operations of Connect remain mysteries with only minor expansions of the fleet. But perhaps that's not surprising because Zipcar has been having trouble figuring out the UK market and they've been in London and LOT longer than Hertz Connect. And speaking of mysteries, Mint in New York, is another mystery - very little action since their launch.

And while I'm on the subject of car rental companies operating carsharing, it's worth nothing that U-Carshare by U-Haul has been quietly adding additional cities and a couple of schools, as well. That said, the U-Carshare marketing strategy is also a mystery - almost invisible in my home town of Portland, Oregon (although they finally had a presence at the recent Sunday Parkways event I wrote about earlier).

It's shaping up to be an interesting year in carsharing.

Getting from A to B and transforming transportation along the way

Eric Britton, Robin Chase and others have written eloquently about the urgency for making massive changes in our transportation system. What will offset a big chunk of that car use is pretty clear: a lot more walking and cycling, increased use of public transportation, ridesharing, plus a dash of carsharing!

My guess is this will probably involve some high tech solutions - cell phones and social networking services, electric bikes, etc. - but mostly it's going to be a lot more old fashioned shoe leather and bike tires on the pavement. But right now we have a lot of wonderful solutions and a big gap between what we're doing and where we want to be.

But what combination of factors will motivate a large number of people to change their these transportation habits is a mystery. Carsharing is indeed a "missing link", but it's only one of a number of "missing links" in the chain.


Recently, the City of Portland is sponsored the latest in a series of Sunday Parkways bike rides, attracting thousands of people, families, and kids for a ride through several neighborhoods. Cross streets are controlled and it's a veritable party attracting thousands of people over a 5+ mile circular route. The other part of event is scheduling community groups, food vendors and musicians of all kinds to set up in the parks along the route. It is truly inspiring to see so many people on bikes and it seems can't help create awareness and experience of cycling in a broader section of the population than the "hard core bike commuters". It's a small, but I think important step in the cultural shift in our thinking and transportation habits. You can see a nice Streetfilms video of the first event last year here.

The start of such a shift was reflected in an interesting essay by a Canadian newspaper columnist who characterized the change in the change in their attitude about cars from "object of desire" to "necessary evil". I think this captures one of the cultural shifts perfectly - for so many people cars are now becoming a necessary evil.

Another cultural shift I've been thinking about could be a basic change in the type of cars we own - instead of the maximum car we can afford, we would spend our money on the minimal car we need for 90% of the trips we take. This minimal car wouldn't have to be a "econobox". Daimler has shown there's a market for a $15,000 city car and Europe has got a wide variety of upscale microcars! For now, car ownership in the US is probably too cheap and awareness of the impacts of ownership too limited to see this happening very much.

What's needed now is some good minds to think about the intermediate steps to facilitate this cultural shift and conditions to promote them. With the passage of climate change legislation in the US and a new commitment to addressing environmental problems, the next decade is going to be interesting.

$1 per DAY Carsharing opens in Toronto - of course there's a catch!

Not only is it cheap, the company REQUIRES that you drive at least 30 kilometers per day. The catch, of course, is that you're driving a vehicle "wrapped" with corporate logos.

It's the brain child of Andreas Kotal of Cityflitz Fleet Advertising in Toronto. The company has had several clients over the past year. Their press materials indicates they have plans to go national.

CityFlitz customers pay a one-time, refundable $350 security deposit, $30 processing fee and $7 monthly fees, then get the cars - which are available 24/7 to members with access to lock boxes on CityFlitz parking sites across the city - for a loonie a day. Drivers have to travel at least 30 kilometres on each trip. Press reports indicates they will use lockboxes for ignition keys although the company press packet says "(cell phone) text message unlock".

Both Autoshare and Zipcar were not worried about the service. The Globe and Mail quoted Zipcar spokesperson Kristina Kennedy, "That's mobile advertising and we're a car-sharing service. I think they're two very different industries."


The launch on August 21 featured Yahoo branded vehicles that were equipped to serve as free wi-fi hubs, along with GPS (presumably so Yahoo knows where they're getting exposure.) They'll be available for carsharing use starting Sept. 1, according to press reports.

Yahoo marketing person Hunter Madsen was quoted by MediainCanada.com saying that the campaign a "lighthearted field marketing program that aims to surprise and delight people by taking the Yahoo! Canada online experience on the road. People can send emails or look up anything at www.yahoo.ca from the comfort of the zany purple cars we've turned into traveling 'Y!-Fi' hotspots."

Some Good Perspectives About Carsharing and Marketing

Writer Mike Bierne, at a website call Brandweek, has published one of the most thoughtful and comprehensive articles about carsharing in a long time. While concentrating on "Flex" and "Zip", he acknowledges the role of the "indies", City Carshare, Philly Carshare, HourCar, etc. the article, titled "Temporary Plates", provides a very good overview to anyone interested in the current state of the industry.

It includes a discussion about recent efforts to introduce "hourly car rental" by Enterprise (in several cities) and Hertz (in Manhattan). As I have written earlier, I think the carsharing people should be concerned about these efforts as they will confuse the marketplace and our governmental partners.

But the heart of the article for me was the discussion about carsharing market positioning near the article. Bierne contrasts the early emphasis on "green" marketing (perhaps overstates it a little, since after all we were marketing to early adopters!) with later efforts by the "big guys" to find a broader appeal. Here's a quote from the article by Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith:

"The green positioning was off the mark," he said. "Most consumers don't change their buying position [just] because something is green. We had to come up with a focus for our brand that was much more exciting and broader than that."

...However, in Griffith's view, Zipcar had to be positioned as a lifestyle brand, one that transformed living in the city without a car into an alternative that was smarter and hipper than owning one. Four years ago, the company hired Yankelovich, New York, to conduct psychographic research. The study identified potential customers like the "aspiring achievers"—brand and status conscious people who are more likely to buy a car—and "individualists," who were early Internet adopters and heavy bloggers.

And the rest is history, as Zipcar has demonstrated. Later, the article makes another good point quoting Flexcar's PR person, John Williams:

"There's a transformation aspect involved with the ability to have access to a car when you need one without having to own it," said Williams, who's ever on watch for stories he can publish of people whose personal or financial lives have been improved though their Flexcar memberships. These true tales range from a couple who qualified for a bigger mortgage-and bought a bigger house after dumping their car, to working mothers who can spend more time with their children because the cost-savings of car sharing allowed them make ends meet with just a part-time job. "Those are very powerful stories," Williams said. "Car sharing is a liberating presence for folks, and that freedom leads to a very strong core brand affinity. People have an emotional connection to the freedom they enjoy because they can have a car when they need it."

Changing Routine Choice to Rational Decision-making

Deciding how to get from one place to another becomes a deeply ingrained habit for most people. Unhooking people from these habits is one of the important challenges that carsharing faces.

Europe seems to be significantly ahead of North America in research by social psychologists on how to change the habitual nature of most people's travel. A paper from the 2003 Swiss Transportation Conference "From routine choice to rational decision-making between mobility alternatives" provides valuable background for all carsharing companies in promoting their service. Author Dr. Sylvia Harms wrote this report while at the University of Zurich and she is the author of many reports on sustainable transportation and now on the faculty of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research Centre, Leipzig-Halle, Germany. This report is very readable and is based on her research with Mobility Carsharing Switzerland customers.

Harms describes the situation this way:

"car owners... first had to undergo a break-through of their car-use routines before they became aware of the car-sharing offer and [take] into consideration as their own behavioral alternative. Triggering events for such a break-through were changes in a person’s life situation or her outer mobility conditions which led to a change in her mobility requirements, opportunities or abilities. I.e., the own car either could not be used anymore or its use was less and less wanted so that the need for new mobility options increased. After this change from a routine to a conscious, rational decision-making state, the adoption of car sharing depended on actual mobility needs as well as personal attitudes and values."

The paper summarizes research on how habits are formed - "stable decision-making context and frequent, satisfying performance of the behavior within that context". After that, travel decisions often become "frozen" with little consideration of choices in future situations. In her research with carsharing and non-carsharing members, she examines the possible reasons for this:

* Cognitive blindness - people don't consider options or only superficially
* Motivational blindness - people don't consider options contrary to their own convictions
* Uncertainty - new options have so many uncertainties they aren't considered fully; tending to rely on personal communication rather than evaluating things more objectively

Harms reminds us that new attitudes, a precursor of considering an option, must be reinforced multiple times before the option is likely to be considered. Harms identifies that "trigger events" were reported by 85% of the car owners who became carsharing members in her research. Only 55% of members who did not own a car before joining (or owned a car more than six months before joining) reported trigger events, but attributed their decision to join carsharing to gradual changes in their situation. She identifies the importance of these "context changes" in the decision to join carsharing. Such trigger events may be a new job, moving a new city or getting married or divorced. But her research indicates that even those with strong transportation habits will seek information about carsharing, although they will be less likely to join.

The decision to adopt carsharing is related to what Harms calls the "behavioral distance" of the person to the new technology. Heavy car users have to significantly modify their habits while heavy public transport (PT) users find that occasional access to a car enhances their lifestyle. Interestingly, she notes, heavy PT users are less likely to join carsharing than people with weak public transport usage habits. This may because heavy PT users may find carsharing nice but not necessary and they probably find it expensive in comparison to public transport.

Harms' full paper (in English 30 pages) is available by clicking here.

How can local governments suport carsharing?

Robin Chase, founder and former CEO of Zipcar, recently posted a very good response to the question of how cities can encourage the growth of carsharing. Robin has graciously allowed me to reprint her response.

"Here is advice offered up to some city government officials in answer to the question: "how can and should a government support the development of Car Sharing Organizations (CSOs). As I write this, I note that many things revolve around the major cost items of running the business.

1. Car insurance. Insurance is very difficult to obtain in this nascent industry since the insurers have no experience with the risk basis, and it is a major cost to the CSO. It took years of accumulating data to finally get our insurance rates down in line with reality. Establishing some kind of pool for just the catastrophic incidents is an important way in which insurance risk can be tiered, making insurance affordable.

2. Parking. Parking ranks right up there as one of the largest variable costs. CSOs compete with individual's costs of maintaining and parking their own vehicles. If private parking is available on-street (cheaply), this makes the CSO service relatively more expensive than owning your own car and parking it on-street for free or close to free. Likewise, the convenience of on-street parking can make car-sharing (or private ownership) that much more (less) appealing than the alternative parked deep in large garages. This can swing both ways in supporting or creating an additional hurdle depending on where (and price) of the residential housing stock.

My best advice here is: Offer up some parking spaces (municipal lots or on-street) for one year agreements to whichever car-sharing company wishes to bid on them. In the early years, you will likely have only one company bidding, and their bid will be close to zero $/month. As the business gets more established, and as competition enters the market, the value for specific parking spaces to specific companies will rise: the city will enjoy the additional revenue, and more than one company can compete in specific locations (especially if you can offer up more than one space in a location). This seems like the most fair way to both nurture a budding industry, as well as accommodate success and competition.

3. Marketing. This is very very dear to both starting and existing companies. The city has lots of resources to get the word out to residents at very low cost. Providing this ability, whether the area has one or many competing companies is critical, and keeps the costs of providing the service down. For example, on bus, subway adverts, or information mailed out to residents that renew vehicle registrations, etc. Again, please make sure to offer this service if there is only one company, and quickly accommodate the addition of other competitors as they arise.

4. Taxing, Zoning, Plating, Parking Permits. Zipcar operates in many cities, counties, and states across the US and now Canada (Toronto). Obstacles have included: residentially zoned neighborhoods where the inclusion of a car-share parking space could be construed as "business" and thus not allowable; a business tax applied on each and every parking location as if it were a separate "business establishment"; per transaction taxes meant for car rental that make the economics of hourly rental impossible (i.e. $10/rental tax ... if you rent for just a few hours that makes it economically unreasonable); are these vehicles plated commercial or residential? In Boston, commercial plates pay a higher rate at the toll booths, and get to park in loading zones. We would like to pay residential rates at the tolls and not be allowed to parking in loading zones... In any event, you can imagine how these can cause issues, some of which are easier to resolve than others.

5. Geographic carve-outs. If my memory from 3 years ago serves me, London offered up its support for carsharing on a borough by borough basis (?). I think this is problematic because, like most businesses, carsharing does best when it can scale. Also, users very much stand to gain from competition (improved quality of service) and a large network (i.e. a member can pick up a car from both work or home, without having to join two companies). Again, this is an easy issue to correct going forward."

-- Robin Chase (Founder & former CEO of Zipcar)

If you'd like to see the orignal thread from the World Carshare discussion, click on the LINK below (YahooGroups ID required).

Searching for Carsharing

Kevin McLaughlin, webmaster of Carsharing.net, pointed out yet another obscure part of Google's empire - the Trends search page that summarizes who's searching for what from where.

Here's a chart showing the frequency of searches for "car sharing" from different countries.



Is no one looking for carsharing in the US and Canada? And what's going on in Genoa, Italy, anyway?

Fortunately, when you search by company name you see where people are looking for Flexcar:


And where they're looking for Zipcar:



From these two graphs it appears slightly more people in San Francisco are looking for Flexcar than Zipcar (although there's no scale on the graphs). Sorry, Google Trends doesn't seem to be able to list trends for City Carshare.

The Google Trends page also shows weekly searching volumes and attempts to relate it with Google News stories. You can do your own search of search trends at the LINK below

Is free beer a good way to sell carsharing?

Everybody's doing it, it seems, Flexcar, Zipcar, Community Car, you name it... It's holding a neighborhood member events - at a local watering holes with free beer (or other beverages) to recruit new members and stay in touch with existing members.

There's a good reason to do them - carsharing is ultimately a local experience - it focuses attention on the car location (hopefully locations, plural) close to where members live or work. Except for the car itself, all the other infrastructure of carsharing is largely invisible to the member - so this is a chance to put a face on the company.

The other good reason to do them is that neighborhood membership events work - they can bring in new members at a much lower cost than just about any other marketing method. One major company reports that when you figure in the cost of the beverages, incentive payments to existing members that bring new members to the events, plus whatever incentive you offer the new member (free usage, discounted application fee, etc.), it's about half the price of what their general marketing costs per new member.

To make them successful you need to promote the event properly - if you're doing any paid advertising, be sure to promote it there, and if your ad budget is more reliant on the guerilla marketing department, don't just rely on your internal email list - post a notice on CraigsList or other local electronic bulletin board.

And make sure "the offer" is compelling - usually a little free car usage for the existing member (in addition to the free beer) and a discounted application fee and a first trip discount to the new member. For example, Flexcar requires that the first trip be taken by the new member within 2-3 weeks of approval in order to get the discounts, so the momentum isn't completely lost.

The other reason to do these events is stay in touch with your members (the one's that are bringing their friends to sign up) - giving them an opportunity to tell you what they like (and dislike about what you're doing). They'll take much better care of the cars when they know there's people behind the system!

But don't just do these events once in a while - do them regularly, at least 4 times per year, throughout all the neighborhoods you serve. Remember, it's the trigger events in people's lives that cause them to join carsharing - and every month there's a new crop of people who are ready to join but need the nudge to sign up. Your event will do that.

For now free beer sounds pretty good but next summer I'll be ready for the free ice cream events!

Clever Carshare Advertising Ideas

I know this post isn't quite what it appears, but bear with me...

A big corporate carsharing undertaking in Great Britain developed some first rate advertising to promote itself. I think the messages and images are worth thinking about. They're striking images and each message is told with a bit of a twist. The service, BAA Carhsaring, is operated by British Airways at its 7 airports in Great Britain.


This first illustration combines the ideas of driving and sharing.




Telling people about the program's success.



And a very cute image telling about their growth.

So now that you've looked at the images, you probably know what's not quite kosher about this - these aren't ads for a car club, they're ads for ridesharing. But I still like 'em and think they're a good reminder about the way we talk about ourselves.

Thanks to British ad agency AlterEgo for these ads. You can see other ads in the series at the agency's website by clicking on the LINK below.

Zipcar introduces some clever customer features

In what my wife says is seemingly endless noodling on the web, I recently learned that Zipcar has signed a deal with the Boston Ikea to have designated parking spaces right by the front door of the retailer's Boston store. And not only that, show your Zipcard at the Ikea restaurant and get a second entre for free. Anything to get you to spend more time there, I guess. On Zipcar's part, they're wrapping seven vehicles with Ikea-Zipcar logos, as well - and I do mean wrapping!

I also learned that Zipcars are equipped with E-Z Pass payment systems, to speed members through tollroads and bridges in the Northeast. To make their customer experience even more seamless, any use of the E-Z Pass during their trip will automatically get added to their next monthly Zipcar bill. How slick is that?

Add these little touches to the XM satellite radio, the cool Google maps that slide around as you search for vehicles, and their vehicle fleet and you've got a heck of a customer-friendly package.

Way to go Zipcar!

Higher Gas Prices Spur Carsharing Membership

All the carshares I've talked to have been reporting very strong membership growth during 2005. Zipcar CEO, Scott Griffith, reports that they're taking in 3,000 new members per month (in all cities), and have experienced a 30% increase in signups since August, when gas prices started to climb, according to a recent Boston Herald article.

Higher gas prices certainly help draw a car owner's attention to the possibility of alternatives, including carsharing, for at least some of their trips. Marketing by carshares emphasizing "free gas" certainly takes advantage of this new awareness. Here's an ad appearing on buses in Seattle that includes Flexcar as one of the alternatives.


A recent study by GfK NOP, an international consulting firm specializing in consumer research (GfK stands for Growth from Knowledge), identifies the price thresholds at which Americans say they will alter their lifestyles to save on gas, including carpooling; using public transportation; walking, biking or using other forms of transportation; reducing overall driving, using their most fuel efficient vehicle; and buying a more fuel efficient vehicle.

The GfK NOP Green Guage study, based on in-home interviews with 2000 people, reports that 25% of people surveyed would consider alternatives at $3 per gallon. We're there in many parts of the country and apparently they are considering alternatives.

Lifestyle changes consumers will make based on the price per gallon of gas
(from GfK NOP 2005 Green Gauge Report)

                             $3.00/   $3.50/   $4.00/   $5.00+/
                               gal      gal      gal      gal
  Drive Your Most Fuel
   Efficient Vehicle           35%      44%      50%      57%
  Immediately Purchase a
   More Fuel Efficient
   Vehicle                     27%      40%      54%      71%
  Reduce Overall Driving       34%      47%      56%      65%
  Walk/Bike More and Other
   Forms of Transportation     24%      38%      49%      64%
  Use Public Transportation    16%      26%      40%      59%
  Carpool                      25%      38%      49%      66%

Based on the Percentage of Consumers Owning at Least One Vehicle
Numbers are Cumulative

Below is a link to the GfK NOP press release about the study.

Marketing: Influencing the Trigger Points of Joining

When we first started Carsharing Portland in 1998, I thought that we had such a great idea that lots of people would immediately sell their cars to join CSP. I thought our competition was "car ownership" and that if we could just show people all the advantages of carsharing, we'd win, easy. As I, and many people before and after me have learned, this is not the case.

But we're not simply up against the benefits of "car ownership", we're also up against the habitual use of a car for all sorts of trips that it's not necessarily all that appropriate for. This where trigger points comes in. The trigger point is when the habitual behavior has been interrupted, or at least, is open for consideration.

As Sylvia Harms, in Switzerland, and others have demonstrated, people are most likely to join because of "trigger events" in their lives that force them to reconsider their transportation/mobility habits. Two common trigger points are:
• Existing vehicle needs major repairs, fail smog test or is totalled in an accident
• Moving to a new residence, especially moving to a new city, where one's habits and familiarity are not as ingrained,
Other trigger points include changes in marital status, and change financial where-with-all. Sylvia Harms research, described in detail in her book Besitzen or Teilen ("Ownership or Sharing") indicates that people who have never owned a vehicle, or haven't owned one for at least six months, are much more ready to join carsharing than others. Why? Because their transportation habits are no longer centered on auto-mobility.

But some new ideas are adopted faster than others. So the central question I keep pondering is what we can do to speed up the joining process. As Marketing 101 reminds us, the first step is to make people aware of your service in advance of when they're faced with having to make a decision. And while we can rightfully pat ourselves on the back that there's usually a very high level of awareness about carsharing after a remarkably short time, it's clear that not everyone has the right idea about what we're offering. (If so, they'll certainly never consider us as an option when they're at their trigger point.) I can't tell you how many "employer transportation fairs" I've been at where people breezed by my table saying, "No thanks, I don't need carsharing, I take the bus!" (And a surprising number of transit agencies have a similar notion, as well.)

Once we've laid the groundwork of awareness, then we can try to figure out how to influence people's perception of these "trigger points". So, it seems to me that our marketing should
• Get people to realize they may not use their cars as much as they think they do; and so they're really wasting a lot of money for this convenience - whether a new car or clunker - considering there's such a cool alternative available to them
• Remind people of the hassle factor of owning a car - buying gas, the cost of gas, the cost of insurance, taking time out for oil changes, the hassle of cleaning the inside of the car
• Show them how simple it is to use our cars (your procedures are simple, aren't they?)
• Remind them of the environmental benefits of carsharing and especially of getting rid of clunkers

So, let's get on with breaking people's transportation habits and increasing their awareness of trigger points, shall we?

You can download a PDF of a short summary of Sylvia Harms' analysis of trigger points and carsharing here.

Marketing: Carsharing Logos on Vehicles

All the carsharing companies I've seen have pretty subdued logos on their vehicles, sometimes to the point that you could miss them altogether.

Why? One reason may be that in the focus groups that start ups inevitably think they HAVE to conduct, they've probably heard some people saying don't want any logos on the car, while others, who think it will be cool to be driving a shared car, will say they'd be comfortable with "tasteful" identification. And so they put a couple of decals on the vehicle and call it good.

But why not "brand" the vehicles as well? City Carshare started out with the off-green VW Beetles which seemed to me to be a very effective branding strategy. (To this day when I see a green Beetle I think of City Carshare, first, and then Zipcar, which had the same idea about branding.) But, I've long felt that using a graphic element from the company logo in large format on the vehicle could visually "unify" the fleet in the public's mind. And now I've seen a good example - the Dutch Greenwheels logo (above). The graphic element probably ought to something abstract, and ideally "active" or "fun", and not just some big block letters. The element needs to become part of the "style" of the car - like racing stripes. Another benefit of using these large graphic elements could help to visually unify a fleet that's become multi-colored over the years.

And speaking of graphics on cars, it wouldn't surprise if some day we'll see something even more extreme - a carshare that offers 2 classes of vehicles - the traditional car and the standard price and discounted vehicles that are "wrapped" with advertising, either for themselves or for other companies.