March 2009 - Cover Story
Vehicle Return Rides Into Powersports
When EFG Companies signed a licensing agreement in 2005 to bring a
vehicle-return program to the U.S. market, they couldn’t have guessed it would become a viral advertising sensation for Hyundai. With momentum on its side, the company now has its sights set on the powersports industry.
By Gregory Arroyo
The executive behind Hyundai’s launch of its
payment-assurance program called the media attention it received
“unparalleled.” A Florida auto dealer who has been in business for 45 years said the publicity Hyundai
received was like nothing he’d ever seen. Luckily, that very same program is
now making its way into the powersports industry.
Although the F&I industry has occasionally generated
headlines in major news media outlets, never has it drawn the type of attention
the Hyundai Assurance Program garnered. In a little more than two months, a
Jan. 6 post on YouTube of Hyundai’s commercial received more than 106,000 hits.
And according to online automotive information resource
Edmunds.com, page views on the automaker’s Website jumped 27 percent the day
after it aired the Hyundai Assurance Program commercial during the 81st Academy
Awards on Jan. 22.
“The guy that quarterbacked the launch of the Hyundai program
came from Ford. He was there during the Firestone debacle, and he said the
media attention the program received blows even that away,” said Jeff Beaver, a
senior marketing executive for EFG Companies, which operates as the U.S. distributor of the WALKAWAY program.
“We also have a dealer down in Florida, Rick Case,” Beaver continued. “He
has a CD with seven or eight clips of him on TV talking about the program. Even
he said, ‘I’ve been in the car business for 45 years and I’ve never seen
anything like this.’”
Four Years in the Making
WALKAWAY USA
is the creator of the payment-assurance program, and EFG’s efforts to introduce
it to the U.S. marketplace is a story of how to get the planets to align.
After signing a licensing agreement with WALKAWAY Canada in 2005,
the program spent the next three years being piloted in select markets and
retooled before Hyundai’s Jan. 2, 2009, launch of the program. Amazingly, EFG
Companies rolled the product out the same month U.S. sales would hit their lowest
point in 27 years. The only bright spot was Hyundai.
“We launched WALKAWAY in 2005, and over the course of 2007
and part of 2008 we revamped the program,” said Ricky Wolfe, president of
business development for EFG Companies. “We wanted to be conservative and very
targeted with our rollout.”
Now the company is bringing the program to powersports, a
market Beaver and Wolfe said is primed for such a product.
“When Hyundai conducted its focus groups, they asked
participants what it was like for them in this current economic crisis. They
all said it was a scary time,” Wolfe recalled. “So imagine what that means for
powersports. You have to have a car, but you don’t need to have a motorcycle.
That’s why we think this could be a tremendous tool for the powersports
industry.”