Now is the Time for Every Business to Have Their Own Custom TV Channels

In this time of various versions of divisiveness in our population, our media outlets are pointed out as among the most egregious at aggravating this situation.

It is okay when a TV channel is being played in a residence or a known and non-changing audience, but often it puts businesses with TV viewing audiences in a difficult situation. 

Which channel is best for their audience?

The answer unfortunately is too often no single channel serves this purpose.

This hit home for our company recently when an auto dealership reached out to us.  They were trying to mediate customers arguing over which cable news network to put on their lounge TV.  They wanted to know could we provide a solution that would entertain their customers.

Of course we could, and did…not only with a channel that would entertain but also inform and make their visit more enjoyable and focused on the auto dealership viewing audience.

With this backdrop, it was encouraging to see a company take public their encountering the “what channel is best” situation (https://www.yahoo.com/gma/gym-chain-bans-cable-news-networks-because-politically-064507175--abc-news-topstories.html). 

Unfortunately, this company’s solution is to remove the most divisive channels, even though the remaining ones could still not be of interest to viewers.

Instead of providing what their viewers want, they decided to eliminate the channels currently causing disagreements.

So what next?  When someone renting an apartment says they don’t want to see anything for home improvement, or someone on a strict diet wants no cooking shows?  The way broadcast/cable TV is going it will soon be impossible to find a channel a business can play that will not offend someone.

Why shouldn’t every business have its own custom built and maintained channels?

The technology and infrastructure is in place to make this possible, whether the company does it themselves or uses a service from a company like ours.

We at Unified Brand have shown that every business can have its own television channel(s).  Every channel is custom-built and maintained for that company’s viewers.  The channels are unique for the day, time and potentially different viewer demographics pertaining to every TV screen.

As this is a new concept for companies to grasp, we recognize it is a first step to recognize broadcast/cable TV is not sufficient.  They are starting to recognize at the base level it is condescending to their visitors and employees.  The more brand aware businesses are seeing what it can mean to provide more meaningful communication.

What became of the Fuller Brush Man?

Hyundai’s recent announcement of the Shopper Assurance program (https://www.hyundainews.com/en-us/releases/2417) created a stir in the dealership world, in part because of the Flexible Test Drive.  This allows for a qualified customer to get a car brought to them at their convenience to conduct the test drive.

The press release described it as the “future of car buying…”

Seems to me they are just taking a page from a 1920’s playbook, where the “Fuller Brush Man” would go door-to-door showing his products to households and making the buying experience much easier.

Over time, the FBM would gain the trust of his customers  by periodically showing up with much needed products, and new products to make their life easier; by bringing the product to the customer to make the buying decision.

How sad for the auto industry  the car customer does not have that level of trust with car sales people, to the point that bringing a car to a customer for a test drive is marketed as such a big deal.  I don’t put the fault of this with the auto sales person, but with the dealership business.

They have built nice dealerships to entice visitors, but the process is too much about making the dealership business easier…not making the car buying easier for the customer.  The idea of letting the customer experience the car "on their turf" should result in dealership visits that are more about the customer experience and less about the dealership process.

I hope this is successful and the trend expands so the customer is more in control of the process and more satisfied with the overall buying experience.

Custom TV Channels in Auto Dealership Lounge brings about Future Revenues

Going into the 2017 calendar year, AutoVisionTV (http://www.autovisiontv.com/) was experiencing a rapid growth trajectory with their custom TV channel solutions at interaction points in automotive dealerships around the United States. However, one unique opportunity came along, changing our focus for the long-term mission of the company.

“We recognized the ability of the dealership management team to communicate to their customers was important to the overall culture and environment in the dealership.  They asked for a way to show the impact of our solution related to their customers” said Will Worosylla, VP and Managing Partner of AutoVisionTV. “We reached out through a partner of ours, Text2Drive (http://www.text2drive.com/), a vendor in a few of our existing stores. We built a campaign of exclusive advertisements on our custom channels which promote new opt-ins for the Text2Drive service, and the results could not have been better!”

“The benefit of controlling screen content has come more into focus this year, as more and more dealerships recognize the asset they have in their television screens. Playing slides that never change does not utilize those assets to their fullest.  Our mission became how do we directly impact dealership operations, and revenues, all while creating an environment in these areas that is entertaining yet informative to the customers who are sitting there?”

With that mission, the AutoVisionTV content management team worked with the Text2Drive team to develop a series of advertisements promoting their service.  These focued on its benefits and provided calls-to-action with promo codes unique to eachspecific benefit and could be acted upon by using the exclusive texting codes shown on the screens. The results were impressive!

“Immediately, each individual dealership saw a spike in new opt-ins to the Text2Drive service. With the data provided by Text2Drive metrics, we were able to demonstrate the opt-in revenue generated exclusively by our TV ads alone would pay for our screens for the next three years! We now have direct measurements not only of the value of our screens to convey dealership messages, but also a measurement of its value to the revenues of our dealership partners who utilize our custom content-managed channels.”

In the case of Hegg’s CJDR in Mesa, AZ, the AutoVisionTV lounge channel generated 31 new opt-ins during its initial two months.  These customers returned sooner and more often resulting in future services generating additional revenue for that store.

"The AutoVisionTV product has shown to be an effective tool in communicating to customers in our dealership”, said Dave Bartlett, Service Director at Hegg’s CJDR. “They create, curate and manage the content for us, which in the case of the Text2Drive product helped us get more customers to opt-in to the service so they become return customers who see additional value in the product and services we offer."

According to Will Worosylla, this is only the beginning of customized in-store communications for the CJDR dealers and their vendors. “We will continue to work with all of our dealership partners on additional ways we can assist in promoting the products and services our clients offer.  Our on-going effort is to provide valuable tools they can use to communicate to their customers and drive additional revenues in their service areas through our custom managed channels”.

AutoVisionTV is a division of Unified Brand Signs, Inc. (http://www.unifiedbrand.com/).  It is razor focused on optimizing auto dealership communication to visitors and employees in their stores.  For more information on AutoVisionTV and custom-managed TV channels at all dealership interaction points, please go to http://www.autovisiontv.com/ or contact Will Worosylla at wworosylla@unifiedbrand.com.