Soft Selling: Advertisers Make Their Pitches on Floppy Disks
LATER THIS MONTH, Buick will run magazine ads encouraging consumers to write in for a copy of its 1987 sales brochure. But not just anyone will qualify for one, and it will hardly be your run-of-the-mill auto catalog. What the General Motors division plans to do is mail 20,000 floppy disks to users of Apple personal computers. The strategy: Create a high-tech image for Buick while also making car shopping easier and more fun.</br></br>When people pop the software into a computer, the screen will light up with animated drawings of pistons and crankshafts chugging away and shock absorbers bouncing up and down. By pressing a few buttons, computer users can load the trunk with luggage and place stick-figure drawings of Mom, Dad, Junior and the family dog into the car's seats. Getting down to more serious business, they will be able to compare the standard equipment and mileage of a Buick with such competitive makes as Nissan and BMW, and calculate their monthly payments for different Buick models. "Our disk allows people to ask questions at their leisure without all the sales pressure of a dealer showroom," says Patrick Harrison, a Buick marketing manager.</br></br>Buick is on the inside track of a brand new advertising medium. As personal computers spread to more homes and offices, a growing number of direct marketers are putting their sales spiels on software which they believe will get lots more attention than yet another glossy catalog. "Most brochures end up in the garbage, but a computer diskette will at least arouse people's curiosity to take a look," says Jeff Einstein, president of Einstein Automation Solutions Inc., a New York company that puts ads on floppy disks.</br></br>SO FAR, floppy disks are being tested mainly by marketers of automobiles and financial services, including Chase Manhattan Bank, GM's Chevrolet division and Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln-Mercury division. Equitable Life Assurance Society is developing a disk for its insurance agents to hand out, and Merrill Lynch & Co. is considering disks as a new method for selling brokerage services. "Floppy disks reach only a small audience, but the people who work with computers are an excellent demographic target for us," says Mary Rudie, director of marketing services at Merrill Lynch. SoftAd Group, the Sausalito, Calif., firm that designed the Buick floppy disk, notes that about 75% of PC users are college graduates with a median household income of more than $45,000.</br></br>"Software certainly isn't the right medium for selling toothpaste," says Paula George, president of SoftAd. "But it would work for electronic equipment like VCRs and other expensive products that involve a complex selling message."