Priority Parking Advertorial Campaigns

Seems like there is a new vehicle marketing trend - to offer priority parking spaces in high traffic areas. It usually involves an agreement between the vehicle brand's local distributor and the owner of some high-traffic property to offer free / allocated parking spaces to owners of a specific vehicle model.


In Malaysia, GM Asia Pacific's local JV - Hicom-Chevrolet was the first in the country to offer priority parking. 3 Reserved parking bays are available for Captiva owners in the following shopping malls :
The Curve (Petaling Jaya, Selangor)
Pavilion (Kuala Lumpur)
Subang Parade (Petaling Jaya, Selangor)
Sunway Pyramid (Petaling Jaya, Selangor)
Queensbay Mall (Penang)
City Square (Johor Bahru)

Given the low number of Captivas on the road, 3 per mall is more than enough.

Except for Pavillion mall, Hicom-Chevrolet will pay for the parking fees. Read more here at MTM.


Over in Australia, Honda Australia have also started offering priority parking to owners of Civic Hybrid in Melbourne Central Shopping Centre. More locations are expected to be included in the coming months, including Sydney and Melbourne airports.

It is a novel idea that is more cost effective compared to purchasing a full page advertorial space in any leading publication or to a glitzy conventional roadshow which consumers are all to familiar with and tends to be ignored. Priority parking offers the kind of "wow" factor creative agencies crave for. Car companies benefit from using their customer's own vehicles as a "show vehicle," and it creates talking points among the public. However this method is only suitable for young / low volume brands with very low sales. Obviously a brand like Toyota can't use such avenues as thousands of Toyota owners will be fighting over the few allocated space, and the marketing objectives for high volume brands are different. Both Chevy and Honda are very small players in Malaysia and Australia respectively. Chevy controls less than 1% of the Malaysian TIV while Honda trails in 8th place in Australian car sales tally. Recognition of the Honda brand is very poor in Australia and even brands like Hyundai, Nissan, Mazda and Mitsubishi shift more cars out of their Aussie showrooms than Honda.

Marketing objectives for lesser known brands usually just to create talking points, providing road presence. Priority parking is an ideal way to do so. But there is a challenge of when and how should a car company terminate such benefits. Obviously the practise can't go on forever and as sales volume improve, it is no longer practical to offer such benefits. And what about owners of other models? Won't they feel neglected by the company? What if I am a Chevy Cruze owner and I did not purchase the Captiva not because I can't afford it but because I hate huge clumsy SUVs? Why should some wanabe cowboy Captiva owner who gets cheap thrills from bullying smaller cars be treated better than a sophisticated and discerning Cruze owner like myself?

These are difficult issues, which is why it is important to understand what ticks owners of different models, and then making sure that sufficient provisions are in place to avoid alienating them. Or just make it a short term thing, as Honda Australia did. The Civic Hybrid priority parking is only available between May-11 to May-23. As a "follow-up" effort, a Civic Hybrid display unit will be on show at each location to complement the priority parking services, featuring the Honda Civic Hybrid vehicle and an educational display about Honda’s environmental initiatives.

If priority parking campaigns are executed properly, enough talking points and online discussions would have been created, thus meeting the ad campaign's objective.