There’s a new way to buy cars. Dodge in America has stolen an idea from the wedding industry. You know about wedding registries, where the happy couple nominates a wish list at a department store and their fortunate guests get to buy them something from it? Would you believe the Dodge Dart Registry?
If you want a new Dodge Dart (it’s about the size of a Mazda 3) but don’t have the wherewithal, you simply establish an on-line registry and invite anyone you can think of to buy a part of it on your behalf. Spread the word on Facebook and Twitter.
Cheapskates will go for a tier-one gift such as a handbrake lever or a warning lamp, but your true friends will be right up there with a tier-four gift and get you an airbag or two, or maybe the entire engine.
Smart would-be car owners set up their registry when several gift-receiving opportunities are imminent, such as birthdays, Christmas, graduation or whatever. And they can thank their benefactors with just a click or two.
Eileen Wunderlich from Dodge in the US says this is the first time a car company has created a crowd-funding platform to encourage people to buy a new car. Since the idea was launched in January, nearly 7000 people have set up registries, many of them students moving out of home for the first time.
However, the number of cars that have been fully funded in the first six months of the plan is rather more modest. That would be two.
But the longer Wunderlich speaks to me, the more I get the impression that the whole exercise is about creating awareness of the car through social media rather than scoring sales. “The number one objective of the registry is to build awareness of the Dart,” she admits. “It has been created so people can engage with the brand and view it as digitally innovative. Those who sign up for a registry, and those who sponsor parts, are learning about the car’s features. The registry thus becomes a secretly educational tool. And we’ve learnt that social media can be used to make the process of buying a car more approachable to more people. A fund-raising goal can be anything from a down payment to the full price of the car.”
The nice thing about it for Dodge is that, once registries are established and people start contributing, registry owners feel a growing moral commitment to the purchase. While there’s no contractual obligation on them to buy, and contributors are warned that recipients can use donations any way they please, at the end of the day they’d have to live with a whole lot of questions from curious donors.
More: www.dodgedartregistry.com
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