Back to the future: motors, marketing and the ultimate mobile app
For anyone in the market for a new motor, you’d better have a spare £20k lying around – for a secondhand one. Microchip shortages and ULEZ restrictions have pushed the average price for a used car up to £20,000, with prices rising for the 93rd week in a row.
Cars have become the ultimate mobile marketing device
When you look at the car market today, disruption is happening everywhere. The A-Z guide has been replaced by GPS navigation apps such as Waze, much like the car market was revolutionized by the VW Beetle ‘people’s car’ and later by the Mini, born out of economic necessity in response to the oil crisis.
Now Citroen may just have its very own modern-day innovation with the 100%-electric Citroen Ami ‘quadricycle.’ You’d be forgiven for thinking it looks a little familiar, taking its design inspiration from the revolutionary Citroen 2CV, which ceased production in 1990 – but it’s just as charming and functional, as well as better for the environment. It’s tipped to be the most stylish and technologically interesting concept car. What’s more, it’s only £6k for a brand-new model, and it’s due to hit UK streets later this year – transforming urban driving and bringing electric car ownership to the masses.
Cars are the ultimate mobile marketing device, providing greater opportunities for marketers to meet their customers on the move. With our very own car enthusiast at the helm of the business, The Drum saw this as an opportunity to join forces with Citroen and Waze so that co-founder and editor-in-chief Gordon Young could test drive the new Citroen Ami, bringing on board retail experts to discuss the pivotal role it will play in marketing and the evolution of retail.
Stay tuned and join Young as he ditches the A-Z guide in favor of the Waze app and heads off around London to put the Citroen Ami through its paces. He will pick up Katy Allison, media strategy manager – food, M&S, and Richard Atkins, head of digital production, BBH, Tesco’s creative agency, who explore how in-car advertising offers clever contextual and creative targeting capabilities for brands and retailers to capture users on the go and drive footfall into their stores.
The video follows on from the first journey The Drum and Waze took back in 2020, where Young was seen chugging through the countryside on commute to London in a 120-year-old Darracq in a pair of vintage driving goggles, before swiftly upgrading to the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace to complete the journey. Catch up on the last episode here.
Stay tuned for the full video with Waze launching on March 9 to get a first look into the car of the future, and a better understanding of how in-car marketing is transforming retail’s future.