Ruining Auto Show Season

I know I rarely post on this blog, but since it is the place for my media musings I figured it was appropriate. It used to be the auto show season was a fun time of year, when everyone saw new cars for the first time. From the media’s standpoint it was always a drag because it was so hectic to cover everything in such a limited time frame. To help them out the automakers provided information and photos in advance and put an embargo on the information so no publication could get a leg-up on a competitor.

The concept of the embargo has gone the way of the dodo and so has much of the fun and mystery surrounding the car shows themselves. First, let me say I’m not writing this rant as sour grapes because the competition has “beaten” us on stories. Kicking Tires and Cars.com isn’t about the enthusiast reader. It is about the car shopper, the people that are actually viewing the car shows to plan a future purchase, and yes they like concept cars too. The Cars.com auto show pages are some of the most heavily trafficked all year so it really doesn’t matter if we have the Chevy Malibu up the same day as a big enthusiast web site. This post also should not be seen as an official Cars.com stance, I’m writing it as a media professional who has some background in covering car shows on the web,.

That said, for the enthusiast I would think this trend of one leak after another days and even weeks before the auto shows is a bit annoying. Davey over at Jalopnik hit the nail on the head with his embargo leak parody. I think there is embargo leak overdosing going on. I’m going to absolve Jalopnik, Autoblog and even Left Lane News of most of the wrongdoing because they’re following the tide. Most of the blame rests on the AutoWeeks, Edmunds InsideLine and WindingRoads of the web world and all the buff books minus Automobile, who I guess is so far behind the times they don’t even have an issue on stands yet. The other major faulty party is the automaker who hasn’t adapted to the web either, even though they’re starting to spend a lot more money advertising money there.

The automakers are setting these embargo dates, often at ridiculous times like Christmas Eve, and expecting the publications to bend over backwards to promote their products. That’s mistake number one. The other big mistake is they give the magazines an advance on the information so they can sell more issues on the newsstand, theoretically trumping the interwebs. Well, fans of Jalopnik probably aren’t surfing Caranddriver.com all day long. They have their Jalopnik feed and when Jalopnik sees an AutoWeek or C&D break an embargo they follow and the reader gets it on Jalopnik (or Autoblog) often with better web presentations, so the magazine is still losing out.

The reader is also suffering from a lack of anticipation, excitement and is probably disoriented about how much is left out there to see and when he or she should expect to see it.

Unlike others I have a solution to this problem.

First: The magazines will just have to suck it up. You’re in an aging format. Change your content. MPH did this very well taking much of the focus off of the front of book “news” and put that on their website almost entirely. The rest of the mags, that shouldn’t have outlasted MPH anyway, should do the same. So what if the new Viper isn’t on your February cover. Focus on more reviews. You take all the free trips anyway to drive these cars in advance, add a page or two more of photos and text on those drives along with the comparisons and fleet write-ups, which are actually somewhat enlightening, and I think readers would be just as happy.

You need to build your web presence anyway. Shift (like that word?) your news coverage to your web sites entirely. If my 85 year-old grandmother is on the Internet I think C&D readers are too. They won't miss out on anything.

Second: Automakers should give out the written text about each car along with a few lo-res (maybe 400 pixels wide) images, embedded with the automakers watermarks plainly, well in advance of the show (a few weeks) so writers and editors can plan their coverage. HOLD all the hi-res photos until 24 hours, or one business day if it falls on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday, before the model’s reveal in Detroit, Chicago, LA and NYC. You heard me, one day. I can resize a series of photos for a blog in 20 minutes or so and I’m guessing everyone else can too, if not faster with dedicated photo editors.

Ford puts together some nice PDFs that would be absolutely satisfactory for this, they just like to plan embargoes for holidays when no one is near a computer (which would also hurt their exposure. Don’t they know web traffic is down over weekends and holidays thus bumping their news out of a good press cycle?).

That’s my rant and my solution to said problem. All you auto web media folks can comment below. Oh, and Happy New Year!

Comments

[Michael Karesh]

How low res is low res? Unless it's very low, they're all most people need to see to tell what the car's going to look like. Or would the watermark render them unusable?

But the bottom line, as you effectively argue, is that embargo system is failing, and print is going to have to shift its focus.

[Dave T.]

well it won't matter if its clear as long as there are watermarks etc that would show the photo isn't supposed to be published. It shouldnt obstruct the vehicle though because we need to see it to judge it. For example we weren't given every angle of the Interceptor concept in time for me writing the post and the image we had was the most uncomplimentary of them all. Not a good move and changed my feelings on the concept. They need to avoid that. But take the vehicle debuting tonight. we got photos last night giving us more than 24 hours to get something prepped. Not that hard to do.
Worked perfectly.

[Dave T.]

guess not that perfectly, that embargo held for about 16 hours.