Valvoline. Castrol, GTX. Pennzoil. Mobil 1.
I don’t get it.
I don’t mean the whole dipstick thing. I’m talking more about the fact that I’ve probably seen a thousand motor oil commercials in my lifetime, and I’ve never, even once, remotely considered consuming the product category—not even the product, the product category—advertised.
Who’s buying all this motor oil to justify the exorbitant commercial advertising budgets?
I’m guessing that I’ve seen most of the motor oil commercials in my viewing history on sports networks. Certainly got the male demographic down, and I can imagine that the 6am SportsCenter time slot appealed just as much to 30-year old guys on their way to work as it did to 15-year old me on my way to high school.
But let’s think: What percentage subset of american males could be interested in doing their own oil changes? What percentage even have cars? (THE INTERNET suggests 30% change their own oil (“70% rely on others”); my hunch is it’s even lower than this.) Most places recommend an oil change every 7500 miles or 6 months. (I’d guess, meanwhile, that most people just wait for the panic light on their dash to go on.) THE INTERNET also suggests something like 3-4.5 liters per change. You can get six quarts on Amazon for something like $30-50. So we can’t be talking about more than $75 / yr per customer.
…Seriously? That’s what you’ve been pitching me on, for years?
I get the gist of the long sell. Diamond companies probably don’t mind that 15-year-old me gets incidental views—they’re priming me to some day hunker down and spend $XX,000 on what amounts to little more than a worthless pebble. Beer companies don’t mind, because as soon as (my ID says) I’ve turned 21, I’m doomed to be a hopeless addict. But motor oil? Even a lifetime customer who’s loyal for 40 years couldn’t reasonably spend much more than, like, $3,000. (And how high could brand loyalty even be? How loyal are you to Shell, Sunoco, BP, or Mobil gas?)
And it’s not like these commercials are even geared towards expanding the market! The pitch isn’t “Hey, try changing your own oil! It’s easy using this stuff!”, it’s “our brown goop is better than the others! Look at all these chemicals and nutrients and junk!” Pennzoil and Castrol and whoever are simply bickering with each other over what already seems like an astonishingly small target market.
It seems like the marketing efforts of motor oil, on an entire-industry level, are a complete disaster.
What would I do?
1) Screw advertising. No more TV ads, no more “Castrol Presents the Pennzoil Halftime show brought to you by Valvoline.” It really doesn’t seem like product pitching on such a massive, generic level is worthwhile. With exception for, say, NASCAR events. Maybe.
2) Absolutely conquer your biggest customers. These are probably Jiffy Lube, Pep Boys, Midas, and the like. Make sure that every single outlet exclusively carries your product,which, unlike Joe Six Pack watching ESPN, they’re actually probably consuming at a reasonable rate. This should be easier now that you’ve freed up those millions of burdensome TV dollars.
3) Expand the market, and shoot for loyal customers. I’d guess that the best venue for this would be New, and Used Car Dealerships. With new car owners, you’ve established a time-opportunity for a fresh start and a behavioral change (“have you considered taking better, personal care of your new car?”). With used car buyers, you’ve established a group who’s demonstrated a modicum of car savvy, as well as an interest in saving a few extra dollars a year on their transport.
Or am I wrong? Anyone out there with oil changing experience? Anyone ever been swayed by one of these commercial campaigns? Anyone ever thought with their dipstick?
I would say you are probably off base on this one. At least a little. First, I think that 30% figure is probably accurate when it comes to people who change their own motor oil so that’s a decent number of people. You also have a contingency of folks who take it to a Jiffy Lube but really are loyal to some brand of oil (or simply know they can get a higher quality oil for cheaper) and thus bring their own prepurchased oil to that Jiffy Lube to use in the change. Additionally, most people do oil changes every 3 months or 3,000 miles which is about twice the frequency you estimated.
Are any of these differences earth shattering to the point where I think it somehow justifies the amount of motor oil commercials we see? Of course not. However, they must be at least somewhat useful or the companies (hopefully) wouldn’t waste the money.
Huh. I actually had no idea that bringing your own oil in to a Jiffy Lube was an option—that seems comparable to bringing your own snacks in to a movie or a ballgame.
Doubling the frequency for oil changes does have a pretty significant affect (I must’ve been a pretty terrible car owner). I still have a hard time believing that a significant chunk of consumers have any amount of brand loyalty (do you?).
I’m not a car person, clearly.
I still stand by my point that I think that an educational, market-expanding ad campaign might have some success. The TV ads you typically see all promote some new chemical formula that the oil uses to make it work…better? Technical jargon/nonsense to me. A campaign with terms I can understand (“changing your own oil will save you $100/yr”), or pretend to understand (“switch to Castrol, and listen to how much nicer your engine sounds” (is this even an effect of using better oil?)) would be a start.
Better, I’d run a campaign that said “changing your own oil with Pennzoil is easy. It shows you have a deeper relationship with your car. And it’ll save you $100 every year. We’ve put together a series of instructional videos on YouTube to walk you through.” 30 seconds, hits every one of my points of interest (budget, relationship) and concern (price, difficulty) without asking me to go too far out of my comfort zone (I’m not buying an instructional video DVD set, it’s YouTube).