Motor Trend came to Baltimore this past weekend for their annual International Auto Show so I went to check it out as I normally do. I really went for dual purposes - partially as a car enthusiast, and partly as someone who is fascinated by the marketing power of a consumer show like this. Some of my Orange Element team members couldn’t make it, so I took it as my duty to observe and report, as well as collect some of the bazillion collateral materials put out by the exhibitors of the show.

The show itself was pretty cool. Just about every manufacturer had representation from the Maryland area dealers and some even had manufacturers representatives present to give consumers the “pitch” about why their make and model was better than the next. As far as I’m concerned, the highlights of the show included a really cool robotics presentation by Ford and an over-the-top trade show display by Scion. I’m not a huge fan of their cars (I’m too old), but they really blew it away with the presentation. I liked the Jeep concept vehicle that was there, too.

One of the things that struck me at this show was the amount of waste generated in the auto industry. This is an industry that for years has been the subject of a lot of controversy for producing vehicles that guzzle gas an pollute the environment. But I was shocked at how many manufacturers freely gave out product collateral to anyone (like me) that wanted to toss it in their bag. And it’s not just a simple brochure with some basic information and pictures of the cars. Instead it’s HUGE product catalogs, some of which are upwards of 30 and 40 pages long.

I started to really notice this and at one point stood near a kiosk for Ford and watched people come up and take a product catalog without even looking at it and toss it into their bag, most likely to never look at it again. Had it been a small catalog with 10 pages or so, I wouldn’t have even noticed, but this was a pretty huge catalog and if you figure they gave away probably 30,000 of them, it’s a significant waste. Now multiply that by each car manufacturer and other company that was there and the number has to be huge.

You’re probably asking yourself, “why is a design + communications firm that does a whole heck of a lot of print work criticizing the use of print materials?” Well, I’m not really - there will always be a place for tangible print materials in a capitalistic society. I’m just saying wouldn’t the world be great if some of these manufacturers could scale down their trade show offerings and give consumers only enough information to pique their interest? This would allow consumers to investigate further at their own pace.

Some manufacturers, however, had other ways to get the job done. I was really impressed with Mercedes Benz in this year’s show. They had a rather large amount of space in the Convention Center, but notably absent was any print collateral materials. While their display was beautiful, they forewent the brochures and replaced them with credit card sized cards that invited guests to “Discover more about our newest stars” via a link to MBUSA.com/models. You can even request a brochure or more information on this site. I think it’s a very smart use of marketing materials that saves a lot of trees. I have to give credit to Saturn also for using a unique format for its brochure as well as printing on FSC Certified paper.

Ok - that’s about it for now. Thanks for reading my little summary. As a reward, here’s a picture of one of my favorite cars ever - the Porsche 911 (993).

Garret Ohm
www.orange-element.com

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.