Even if you're nauseated every time you hear a cliched reference to the "Information Superhighway," you can't help but admit it's the perfect metaphor for Porsche Cars North America's digital press site, www.press.porsche.com.
Two years ago, the upscale car manufacturer teamed with the L.A. agency Genex Interactive in an effort to achieve better fuel efficiency in its media relations efforts. The thinking was that an online press kit might offset some of the hard costs associated with the production of bulky paper kits.
Porsche spends roughly $40 to produce a single press kit. This figure accounts for expenses such as paper, printing, binding and product photography, but doesn't include postage or staff time. Kits are mailed via priority mail or FedEx, and one FedEx package costs $9.00. With a mailing list of nearly 5,000, this amounts to a budget guzzler.
To gauge reporters' interest in an online alternative, Porsche distributed a survey to roughly 1,000 media contacts at national auto magazines, daily papers, general business publications, travel magazines and a handful of regional publications such as Chicago-based Tire Kicking Today. Half of the 150 journalists who responded expressed interest in a Web resource. "We weren't after a scientific study," says Barbara Manha, then media relations manager for the luxury car line. The idea was to determine whether it might be worthwhile to offer the media an additional tool.
Of course, there was another motive driving the creation of a digital destination. Porsche had already experimented with a CD-ROM version of its press kit, but this tool (also a static one) didn't do the trick in satiating the 24/7 demands of news-hungry automotive reporters - not to mention the fact that costs of replicating, labeling, packaging and distributing the CD fell in the same range as the paper version. The car company's PR team envisioned an extranet that would feature not only product specs, executive biographies and downloadable, production-quality photography, but also breaking motor sports news and archival material on vintage models.
"Porsche is the type of [car] company where 50% of what we give out is about current products and 50% is historical information," said one spokesperson. "Journalists are just as interested in the first 911 as the current one. Anything evolutionary that we've done, we talk about." An important horn to blow, considering auto-enthusiasts' love affair with all things vintage also extends to competitors such as Ferrari, Mercedes and BMW, according to Martin Peters, media relations manager at Porsche.
Porsche's extranet is a secure site, meaning interested journalists must register online before they are granted access. Password-protection enables the corporate PR team to monitor online activity and to leverage user information to shore up relationships with specific media. "Porsche was among the earliest clients to use the password feature," says Genex President Walter Schild. Given the site's media-specific target audience, "they didn't want 12-year-old boys who were fans running around the site," he says. The manufacturer also sought to control mainstream circulation of information such as MSRPs.
In retrospect, the site has already yielded some unforeseen benefits. When the car company moved its physical headquarters from Reno, Nev. to Atlanta last year, the site provided a virtual "home base" for the media. "The site stayed in one place while the company was in the process of a physical move," says Manha, who left Porsche when she chose to stay behind in Reno. "It would have been impossible for journalists' requests to be handled in a timely manner in the midst of the move if the site hadn't been up."
The beauty of the Web is its fluidity, and Porsche continues to upgrade the site in accordance with the media's fickle tastes. In an effort to offer reporters a fully-loaded driving experience, Porsche is now adding broadcast-quality video footage and real audio, plus exclusive "cutaway" product shots that aren't available in its paper press kit.
Porsche won't share the skinny on start-up costs for the site, nor will it divulge the fees it pays to Genex for ongoing maintenance and hosting, but Peters is confident the site will eventually pay for itself in print savings. This year, Porsche continued to send paper kits via snail mail to its full press list. But next year, reporters who prefer hard copies will have to request them. "Ultimately we'd like to stop putting paper on their desks," says Peters. "Particularly paper they don't want."
(Porsche, 770/290-3667; Genex Interactive, 310/845-9500)