Honda Pulls Back On Media Plans

It seems that Honda is pulling back significantly on its media plans. Last year, the company attempted to make a major splash in the marketing world when it announced that it was redirecting its budget for cable TV advertising into developing its own digital destination – a website and a YouTube channel.

However, the user numbers and interest failed to meet Honda’s expectations. So, while the company still intends to push into digital media, it says that building out a central content destination will cease to be a focus of its marketing strategy this year.

Approximately one year ago, Honda rolled out its plans for an elaborate music-centric initiative dubbed Honda Stage, which was to be anchored by a website and a YouTube channel where music lovers could go to watch clips of performances filmed at Honda-sponsored concerts, as well as videos provided by a slew of Honda’s media partners including Vevo and Revolt. The hope was that its own media properties would provide greater value for marketing younger-skewing cars than purchasing commercial time on television.

Although Honda has said that the Honda Stage program met its very ambitious goal of 2 billion fan impressions across digital, social media and live events, the YouTube channel generated just over 1 million views. However, Honda doesn’t make its subscriber numbers for the channel publicly available, and comScore says that the Honda Stage website falls below its minimum of 50,000 unique monthly visitors for tracking audience data.

“We thought that the website and YouTube channel would be a destination but at the end of the day, people find our content from search [and social media],” said Thomas Peyton, assistant vice president of marketing for American Honda Motor Co. “That was my desire a year ago, to build a music destination, but that isn’t how people want to use us.”

It’s true that many consumers will only go so far in terms of building their relationship with marketers, and its one of the many challenges in developing a successful media brand.

Honda isn’t completely leaving its Honda Stage marketing program behind. Although it is no longer going to push to attract viewers to its own channels, Honda is sponsoring multiple summer concert tours and events over the next 12 months as it looks to further its brand association with music.

The company says that in 2014, it generated 100 million organic video views through various digital channels and purchased another 400 million through ads and other outlets. Now, Honda has a big commodity on its hands as it recently signed on to sponsor a tour for the hit band One Direction. The group has over 120 million followers on Twitter and over 33 million on Facebook. Peyton explained that if Honda is able to tap into that following, “that’s like buying a Super Bowl spot.”