Luxury Auto Brands Are Attempting to Hook Potential Customers With Driver ‘Practices’
As the world’s busiest passenger airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson moves over 75.9 million travelers through its eight terminals every year. Many inbound passengers will catch connecting flights. Some will drive into the metro area to do business with the sixteen Fortune five hundred companies headquartered there. And some will head home to one of the city’s twenty six major suburbs.
But a lil’, fortunate segment of that group will get onto I-75 and take exit two hundred thirty nine to a place called the Porsche Practice Center, which sits just off the airport’s northeastern border. Opened last year, the 26-acre complicated houses the legendary German automaker’s fresh North American headquarters, a mammoth, LEED-certified building accomplish with business center, restaurant, museum and a restoration facility for classic Porsche cars.
But as its name suggests, a big draw for the Porsche Practice Center is the chance to get behind the wheel of one of the world’s most iconic sports cars.
Assuming you’re twenty one or over, wield a valid driver’s license and have prepaid for a reservation, Porsche pairs you with a driving instructor, then buckles you in for ninety white-knuckled minutes on a 1.6-mile track. Out on the sunbaked labyrinth of asphalt, drivers navigate the forms of the treating circuit, practice skid control on the “kick plate” and open up on the straightaways.
Prices range from $300 for a session with a fresh Cayman to $850 for the chance to “test your boundaries to maximum speed” on a nine hundred eleven GT3.
The facility attracts Ten,000 people per year, and Porsche marketing vp Andre Oosthuizen expects that to soon hit 12,000. “The driving program is where the rubber meets the road,” he says. “You’ll get an education, but we’ll put a smile on your face. It’s an practice 2nd to none.”
It’s also the latest example of how luxury automakers are using an extreme example of experiential marketing to differentiate their brands. Porsche is hardly the only player. At a time when premium nameplates like Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are duking it out for the same consumers, it is no surprise that all three are operating driving academies.
According to Jon Schulz, a veteran marketer who spent many years at Ford Motor Co. and now is CMO of the ad-tech rock-hard Viant, providing a potential customer the chance to put a car through its paces can help a buyer over a hurdle that a mere tour to the showroom cannot. “These are high-margin vehicles, and for the average customer the question is, how do you justify [purchasing] it?” he says. “The capability to demonstrate technology and spectacle with the customer–create those memorable moments–are a very positive brand association that marketers just die for.”
That’s not exactly a fresh idea. In Europe, luxury brands have operated such facilities for years. Ferrari operates a driving school in Modena, Italy, for example, while Maserati offers “master driving courses” on its track near Bologna. But over the last decade or so, as luxury European nameplates have opened manufacturing plants and headquarters in North America, many have imported the driving academy practice as well.
Clockwise from bottom left: Crimson Porsche: Eric Simpson; BMW Office: Chris Tedesco; White BMW, instructors: Clint Davis; Race track: Karen Burns; White Porsche: Eric Simpson
“Our driver training embarked in Munich, and it was so popular there that we determined to do it here,” explains Daniel Gubitosa, director of BMW’s Spectacle Center, a $12.Five million facility in the Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., area whose 1.7-mile track opened in two thousand and draws some 15,000 participants annually. (A smaller location operates near Palm Springs, Calif.) With trained instructors (some of them Nascar veterans), a range of programs (from basic to the advanced “M School”) and one hundred twenty of the latest BMW models on palm, the center promises a chance to “become the ultimate driver”–a reference to the brand’s “Ultimate Driving Machine” tagline. “This is a meaty part of our marketing plan,” Gubitosa says. “Getting people into the cars and letting them drive is indeed significant. Everybody walks away with a fresh skill. We want people to love driving and practice the brand.”
An evident advantage of permitting the public to get behind the wheels is that it paves the way for participants to equate the attributes of quality, technology and spectacle with a particular brand name. Put another way, it’s one thing to put out a marketing message, fairly another to enable a consumer to practice the product for himself or herself.
“We would not undertake something like this if we didn’t believe in our brand,” says Bryan Lima, project lead of brand practice marketing for Mercedes-Benz. Eight years ago, Mercedes transported its AMG Driving Academy, a program that had operated successfully in Germany, to the U.S. With five levels of instruction at four tracks around the country, Mercedes charges $1,895 for a basic, one-day intensive practice. Some 1,500 people sign up each year.
The AMG is Mercedes’ high-performance class (with a six-figure price range to match). Lima sees providing consumers the chance to drive one demonstrates the automaker’s confidence in its products. “The driving academy is one of our greatest opportunities to market the Mercedes-Benz brand overall,” he says. “We know what our vehicles can do, and there’s no better platform to showcase the driving spectacle of our vehicles.”
Eight years ago, Audi began suggesting consumers the chance to “thrust the envelope” of its S-class models at the Sonoma Raceway in California. According to the company’s senior experiential marketing specialist Danielle Vontobel, the Audi Sportscar Practice, which attracts around Two,500 drivers each year, does more than instruct road-handling abilities. “It’s about creating a bond with the brand and connecting people to our track heritage,” she says. “We’re rooted in racing history, and a lot of our cars are tested on the track. So we’re providing customers the chance to practice the car where it was built and designed.”
Eyeing that these practices mean gripping the wheel of an enormously expensive automobile and roaring around the banked forms of a professional track, they are emotionally charged practices, intense enough to prompt what auto marketers refer to as conversion. Meaning that such driving programs can turn the merely nosey into actual customers.
“I can’t give you the number,” says Audi’s Vontobel, “but there is data that says that of the people who come to this program, a percentage will buy a car.” Oosthuizen affirms that the Porsche track “translates to sales–we’ve proven that to a fair degree.” In particular, he adds, “if a dealer brings in ten or twelve prospects and demonstrates the cars, we have a much better chance to upsell them, [for example], from a Carrera to a Carrera S.”
BMW’s Gubitosa adds that taking a car for a spin can make all the difference for that customer who’s not fairly ready to buy. “Maybe you’re on the fence and don’t know what BMW is all about,” he says. “Once you get here, you may switch your mind.” Gubitosa hastens to add that his instructors are there to instruct, not stir merchandise. “This is not hard selling,” he says. “We don’t say, ‘Are you ready to buy?’ We want you to feel convenient with the brand. Do we want sales? Sure. But the better job we do showcasing off the car, the more likely you’ll consider the brand.”
And even if track participants don’t buy anything more than a lesson, there’s ample benefit for the brand in terms of word of mouth. Drivers who enroll in classes will invariably tweet about it, take selfies and boast to friends about the cars they drove. “Social media is our largest contraption,” Oosthuizen says. “Because most people talk about and relate their practices, the multiplier effect is very successful.” Adds Mercedes’ Lima: “Word of mouth goes a long way.”
Still, these facilities are not without their issues for those who run them. They are sophisticated to operate, and expensive. They are actually a loss leader for most, however BMW’s Spectacle Center does make what Gubitosa terms “a puny profit.” Concedes Audi’s Vontobel, “It’s a significant investment on our end,” confirming that the automaker’s track program is a line-item expense. Adds Porche’s Oosthuizen, “There’s a lot of wear and rip on the vehicles, the insurance, the cost of your coach”–never mind the upkeep of the track and the rest of the infrastructure. Porsche invested more than $100 million in its Atlanta test track.
Considering the hefty investment, why not just leave test drive to the dealership? That might suffice for those selling a subcompact or mini van, these companies say, but a high-performance car should suggest a corresponding practice. “You don’t appreciate the vehicle until you get onto a course like this and see what the car can do,” explains Gubitosa. “It’s not something you can practice in the dealership.”
“You can only have so much joy driving down the interstate,” adds Oosthuizen. “There’s congestion, traffic and someone in front of you. But at the practice center, it’s a driver-demonstration track. It’s safe and educational. Driving is the pinnacle of the practice, and that’s the beauty of the venue.”
Porsche’s belief in the value of its test track is such that it is building another one on the West Coast that, when it opens later this year, will be even fatter than the Atlanta outpost. The Porsche Practice Center Los Angeles will feature a 50,000-square-foot facility on fifty three acres, including a test track with ten different driving modules that can accommodate 16,000 drivers annually.
“The investment we’ve made is fairly significant–north of $150 million–but it’s a worthwhile investment,” says Oosthuizen. He is well aware that Porsche’s rivals suggest their own elaborate driving practices. But “when L.A. comes to fruition at the end of the year,” he says, “we’ll be at the pinnacle.”
This story very first appeared in the August 8, two thousand sixteen issue of Adweek magazine.