The “Configurator Salivator”- Hurry up and wait!
Awareness, Trial, Usage.
With one-half of a career dedicated to marketing, I get it. As a marketer bringing something new to the world, you spend your waking hours finding new ways to get people aware of your latest really cool thing, then you find an enticement to get them to try it, so that you can finally get them hooked into repeat purchases. So at least I’m acutely aware of where I stand in this time tested process when it comes to my relationship with Porsche cars. Here’s the problem though. I’m fortunate enough to be a repeat purchaser- a loyalist. That means I know what I want next, and have been waiting for it to exist. My shopping list was “essentially” finalized back in January 2018 when I pulled out my credit card to place a bet that something might happen in the future that would match the shopping list.
The list went like this.
#1 Mid-Engine- I’m just partial to the physics on canyon roads and the practicality for long trips with the frunk AND a trunk. #2 Convertible- Ever since selling the RS60 Boxster for the Cayman R, Julie and I have BOTH missed having a long range, top down option. #3. Classic Porsche- a six-cylinder with a manual. Yeah, it is kind of a throwback. #4 Long-term potential- just maybe the possibility of some nostalgic collectability down the road, or at least a less steep depreciation curve. By this I mean “lowish” production numbers, a six cylinder sound with sport exhaust, the last of the mid-engine 6 cylinder normally aspirated engines, and finally (with tongue firmly in my cheek) the first mid-engine 911 with a 4.0 liter engine.
If you hung in through the last paragraph, and you’ve been looking at any of the recent Porsche news, then you know that all criteria on my shopping list have now been ANNOUNCED, in the form of the 2020 Boxster Spyder (718).
Kids aren’t the only ones famous for the cry- “are we there yet??”
Just ask the Porsche sales rep who took my payment back in January 2018.
“Dear Porsche AG marketing guys. I know what I want. You’ve told me it’s real. You hung a poster announcing it, as I visited the factory in June. You brought one- a REAL ONE- to the July Porsche Parade in Boca Raton. You let me take home several posters. You hosted writers in Scotland, including our own Panorama editor Rob Sass, to enable magazine and YouTube content everywhere I look in August and September. And as of this date, I don’t even know (nor apparently does my dealer) when I will be able to place my order for a promised delivery in the spring of 2020.”
I’d never send this to them, but telling you makes me feel better!
Configurator as a pacifier.
Apparently, I only THOUGHT I knew what I wanted- until my sales guy sent me to the configurator! I’m now online at the Porsche Cars North America site, fine tuning what is probably my 10th iteration over as many hours. It seems as though those marketers are telling me “Here suck on this, you make stop crying.” Well, they may be right. And thanks to the configurator, I find that I’m waiting for an 8th generation 911 (aka 992) to show up somewhere in Utah in a new color called “Gentian Blue”- a color also offered on the 718 Spyder. I just don’t feel that I can trust that the configurator image on my monitor- without actually seeing that color “live”. So after all the crying, if the phone were to ring today, ready to take my order, I might have to eat crow and let my dealer know that I need a little more time. So giving credit where credit is due, while the marketing types may have dragged out the “hype” cycle, they also found a way to keep me engaged during the wait. I call it the “configurator salivator”. Thinking about your next new Porsche? Go online and play around with it. It comes in lots of flavors!
Rich Sanders
Zone9Rep@pca.org