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On October 24, Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void announced the launch of an innovative marketing campaign for Budget Car Rental called Up Your Budget. The marketing campaign is being completely managed and run via the blogosphere - there was no press release, and no trappings of a typical marketing campaign - and this was for a major company that ranked third in its industry! It was, as Henry Copeland pointed out, "the first blue-chip marketing campaign created by a blogger, illustrated by a blogger, run on blog software, advertised exclusively on blogs and first reported by blogs."
While the marketing campaign has attracted a lot of blog support, some bloggers - like Evelyn Rodriguez of Crossroad Dispatches in a blog post called Dear Budget-Train Clue Rental - questioned the rationale of such a marketing campaign:
"As a blogger, I couldn't help noticing your new marketing campaign. But I write now as a customer, not as a blogger... I have a time budget. I've no time for contests. Yet give out $160,000 to the most disruptive ideas - from employees or customers - who cares where the best ideas come from? - and I'd been intrigued to participate in investing in my own future customer experience. Why not incent us to come up with reasons so that a mere $3/day or $5/day or $15/day difference won't make us fickle? (You know you're a commodity when I have to look for the rental agreement jacket to remember which agency to return the car to at the airport.) It's self-evident that I like, trust and read blogs, but I ain't changing my rental car buying behavior one iota. Next time I'm going right back to the comparison engine, 100% blog campaign or no... Ah... but give me a remarkable distinguishable service and experience, and then you're conversing."
Budget Car Rental 2.The key, I think, to understanding the innovative new Budget marketing campaign is realizing that Budget's brand had become a "roadblock." The very name implied cost savings - and customers had a difficult time looking beyond the notion of cost savings when deciding whether or not to use Budget. Hence, Budget was perenially the third-largest American car rental agency, year in and year out. Customer who wanted superior customer service or a "hip" car rental experience or anything else simply looked elsewhere.
Budget Car Rental. What happened, though, was that Budget finally realized that its brand had become a "roadblock." With that in mind, they went out and tried to change things. At Budget Truck Rental, for example, they changed their advertising style to include cute cartoons pasted on the sides of trucks. (To see how effective this is, check out Budget Truck Rental's actual moving guidelines in dry, bland text.) This was the first step - convincing customers that the company had more to offer than just cheap prices - that there was a personality inside the company. The second step was to change the very perception of the brand: the whole point of the blog-inspired Up Your Budget contest was not to increase brand consciousness - it was something more profound: to alter the very notion of "budget" through the Up Your Budget Treasure Hunt. The third step, no doubt, will have to do with the unlocking of value at Cendant, the huge travel and real estate conglomerate that owns Budget. Once Budget breaks free of the huge umbrella company, one can only expect more innovation and more original thinking from the car rental company.
As an interesting footnote: at the upcoming FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City, there's a panel discussion about "Brand Roadblocks," in which executives from Avon Products and Yum Brands discuss ways that brands can typecast or pigeonhole a company into standard ways of doing business. A brand, as Budget found out, can actually block you from pursuing dynamic, new paths to innovation and growth. The question becomes: How do you break through this roadblock?
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