By TIM ROBSON SUBARU Australia’s foray into alternate marketing...

By TIM ROBSON
SUBARU Australia’s foray into alternate marketing strategies like ride- sharing is being heralded as a success, with the company claiming that up to 20,000 people have been exposed to models like the Impreza this year alone.
The company is hoping to repeat the feat with the just-launched second- generation XV, but it will take the concept a step further by actively courting sales from people who use the service.
Subaru Australia general manager of marketing Amanda Leaney told journalists at the launch of the new XV last week that 101 Imprezas had been placed with vehicle rental company Drive My Car, which acts as an agent for private owners to rent out their vehicle, since March this year.
“The results we have achieved have exceeded our expectations,” she said. “We’ve achieved a 98 per cent utilisation rate, with a total of 6073 rental days booked.”
Ms Leaney said that 80 per cent of the bookings were made by drivers using the service to source an Uber-compliant vehicle. Uber drivers are required to drive vehicles no older than nine years old.
“We will reach over 20,000 Uber
riders over the three-month period,” she said. “That’s 20,000 test rides, and 20,000 people seeing, touching
and feeling the all-new Impreza.
That is something that traditional advertising cannot achieve.”
Subaru Australia managing director Colin Christie said the key advantage of its overarching Subaru Do campaign was the ability to try new ideas in a relatively risk-free way.
XV
“With the Imprezas, we just let people hop in the car. We haven’t accessed any of the data; we just wanted to
expose them to the product. “With the XV, though, we will look at communicating more closely with the customer base to get a handle on what customers are interested in, and how they
are interacting with it.”
Mr Christie is not concerned
“We’ve had the ‘Subaru Do’ new brand promise in-market now for about 15 months,” he told GoAuto. “It’s all about removing obstacles. It’s a very simple philosophy. Obviously, it’s very complex to bring it to market, but at the end of the day it’s about removing obstacles for our customers and giving them options.”
Mr Christie said that 105 XVs would soon be added to the Drive My Car eet and, unlike the Imprezas, would be used to build a database of potential buyers.
“We haven’t measured (Impreza sale) conversions, actually,” he admitted.
about the car-sharing business costing Subaru real sales, though the company is keeping its eye on the phenomenon.
“I think car sharing in the Australian market will be slower to be taken up than in most other markets for a number of reasons,” he said.
“It’ll certainly happen at a point in time, but I think the reality is in a market like Australia, with its size and travel distances, the market over time will continue to grow, but we don’t see car sharing impacting car sales over the next 10 years.”
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Colin Christie
Subaru Australia sticks to its guns despite large seven-seat SUV AWOL from line-up
By TIM ROBSON
SUBARU Australia managing director Colin Christie is con dent the Japanese brand will continue to be a strong player in the burgeoning SUV sector, despite the ongoing lack of a seven-seat large SUV.
Its three-pronged attack captures a robust share of the small SUV class with the XV, the mid-size SUV segment with Forester and the large domain with the Liberty-based Outback.
However, the brand has operated without a dedicated seven-seat large SUV since the US-built Tribeca was discontinued in 2014, while its successor – the Ascent, which was unveiled at the New York motor show in April – will only be built in left-hand
drive for the foreseeable future.
This keeps Subaru at odds with rivals like Mazda’s CX-9, Nissan’s Path nder, the Holden Captiva and Hyundai Santa Fe, which are a source of valuable incremental sales and help ensure that the most important bases in
the market are covered.
“Look, I’m not sure if we necessarily
need one,” Mr Christie told GoAuto last week. “I think the three products
that we’ve got in that space are doing extremely well, and meet the bulk of the needs of the Australian market.”
However, the local Subaru chief is hopeful that parent Subaru Corporation will address the shortfall in the range, if only to help the rest of the line-up.
“Would we like it? If there was a conversation that, at any stage, that suggested that it (Ascent) could be put into a right-hand format, we’d de nitely be interested in progressing that discussion,” he said.
“It is less about a volume opportunity for us, but it’s more an opportunity for us lling a gap.”

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