Walk Around Video Done Right

It is interesting to stop and think about how new car and new model year launches have changed over the last few decades.  To look at pictures and hear stories from the 50’s and 60’s you see how showrooms were blacked out with butcher paper, cars were covered and roped off with red velvet ropes – all creating the “ultimate show” for the big unveiling date.

Just like anything else, new car launches have become common-place and overlooked by most people in the industry. Now the focus is on dramatic TV commercials that run in key primetime shows and high profile sporting events.  The emphasis on what happens on the showroom floor and how it is revealed to the current owner base for the most part has been forgotten by the dealer body and isn’t pressed upon to the dealers by the manufacturers.

However, for the launch of the new 2013 Honda Accord, a Honda dealership decided to get back to the way vehicles used to be unveiled while using the power of the internet and social media to spread the word.  The plan was forged with this simple idea in mind: give people the information that they want in the place and time they want it the most.  In the information age that we live in, people prefer emails rather than phone calls and would rather watch a video than spend an hour driving to a dealership to see a new vehicle.  So, Ben and Patrick Brannon of Brannon Honda decided to block off the showroom one afternoon and shoot in high definition a video walk-around of the new 2013 Accord.

This video allowed them, as the voices of the dealership’s marketing plan, to introduce the new model and then let a sales specialist show off all the features and benefits of the new Accord.  The dealership was closed completely, a film crew arrived to light every angle of the car to show off its best attributes and then it was lights, camera, action.

The result – and this is just a teaser clip – is the best way that I have seen in years to launch an all new vehicle to the public.[wpvideo SILX41ha]