David Ropes

Brandweek, May 3, 1999 by Catharine P. Taylor

For Ford's marketing chief, the Web is a chance to restage the company's brands with a customer-revved engine.

It's been decades since Detroit was known as a cradle of innovation. But as the auto industry approaches the millennium, change is taking place nonetheless. This time it's being brought on not by industry-fueled innovation, but by technological changes that are giving consumers much more control over the car-buying process.

The Internet's effect on the auto industry was not expected to be so profound. Though carmakers, including Ford, were among the first consumer advertisers to build robust Web sites, those sites were mostly brochureware, with no greater goal than to give consumers a clickable version of collateral material. The Web, in fact, was viewed as an unlikely place for someone to actually buy a car. Instead, the Internet has become integral to the purchase process. Consumers have flocked to it not only for information, but because it allows them to side step much of their interactions with car dealers.

The revolution spawned an Internet-specific car industry. Sites including Autobytel.com and Microsoft's CarPoint have sprung up in recent years, signing agreements with dealers of all makes across the country, thereby giving customers the potential to buy any kind of car they'd like through one Web site. Though the sites have benefited those dealers who signed up, and buyers hungry for third-party information, they've done little for manufacturers. Still, consumers clearly see a role for manufacturers' sites. According to a recent study by the Southfield, Mich.-based Polk Company 59 percent of those who shopped for a car on the Internet visited such sites.

It was in this environment that Ford, under the stewardship of David Ropes, the Reebok and Pizza Hut veteran who is now director of Ford's corporate advertising and integrated marketing group, launched the online Ford Connections program. The series of interlocking sites, which went live in January under the Ford.com umbrella, are looking to capitalize on the Net's ability to facilitate relationship building, and as Ropes says, transform Ford from a manufacturing-driven company to a customer-driven one. At BuyerConnection, for instance, visitors, using a tool the company refers to as the configurator, can "build" any car in the Ford and Lincoln Mercury families, and request a price quote from a local dealer. Ford eventually plans to add its recently-purchased makes, such as Mazda and Volvo, to the program. That move, in turn, mirrors a new plan called AutoCollection in which Ford is putting all of its brands, from Ford to Aston Marlin, under one dealer roof in selected markets throughout the country.

But there are other Ford Internet plans under construction as well. Ropes talks excitedly about his vision of building a Ford "virtual mall," a string of major sponsorships Ford plans to do across the Internet targeting different demographic groups. One of these, the Women's Auto Center on the iVillage site, launches today, and another, with the yet-to-launch teen venue Digital Entertainment Network, will launch over the summer. However, Ropes sees those agreements as simply the beginning of a bundle of such demographic sponsorships.

As Ropes freely admits, the rise of the Internet, and the building of his "virtual mall," help call into question the role of traditional mass media. Ropes, along with his Internet sidekick, Thor Ibsen, who leads Ford's Internet and New Media group, talked recently with IQ about the role of the Internet in Ford's, and the automotive industry's, future.

IQ: The Internet has taken the automotive industry by storm. What has most surprised you about the speed with which it's happened?

David Ropes: Probably the biggest surprise is the amount of quoting that's happening online to inquire about the purchase of a vehicle. In 1999, the amount of inquiries that lead to negotiations with dealers online is, I think, in the 2- to 3-million range. ... In the U.S. market, the industry will sell about 16 million new vehicles [this year]. So I believe you're looking at somewhere in the order of 15 to 20 percent share of the total new car business online requested.

What does that say about the rise of the Internet and people 's attitudes toward dealers and the car-buying process?

Ropes: I don't think it's an indictment against the dealers as much as it is that a consumer for the first time is in control of the buying process because of access to information.

What have you learned about the consumer's online search process? Where do they go first?

Ropes: I think it's all over the map because we're so early in the game. But I would say that the average Internet buyer is probably visiting at least three locations. It's only been, literally, in 1999 that you could actually price out a vehicle online from a manufacturer, as opposed to going to a broker or an intermediary like CarPoint or Autobytel.

[What's] important is to recognize the Internet as an enabling technology about a customer relationship that leads to e-commerce rather than e-commerce that leads to a customer relationship. The key for us is dialogue; to be personal with you. It's extraordinary that the Internet allows us, for the first time in the history of selling automotives, to know who's buying and when they're buying. There's never been a mechanism to show who's raising their hand.