Thoughts On Advertising: CSX Off Track
Once a year it seems, something in advertising baffles me. Last year it was Rachael Ray and Dunkin’ Donuts during football games. This year it is those four times an hour CSX radio commercials. While they are cleverly messaged – one gallon of gas propels a stock car once around the track while the same gallon moves ten tons of turpentine ten miles – I keep asking myself "why are they telling me?" and "what action do they want me to take?" We can’t go to the store and chose between turpentine that was hauled by rail versus road, can we?
I’m not alone here. I found a forum on Trains.Com, where people from all over the country are wondering the same thing: why the commercials? There’s a lot of speculation on the target audiences: regulators, shippers, investors, potential employees and general brand awareness (i.e., everyone). But, no one seems to get it.
I may be off track, but in this new age of conversation where communications are personal, I think CSX could make better use of their marketing dollars by targeting their audiences with a little more precision (or spend the money hauling the turpentine another ten miles on a gallon).
How do you feel about this?
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December 30th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Their messages may be blowing in the wind, but the CSX campaign is strategic in several contexts:
#1 Railroads are the “new black” for shippers who want to reduce cost to source and distribute
#2 CSX was the last of the big rail carriers to launch a brand campaign — UP, BNSF, NS did this three or five years ago — and their trucking competition is frequently heard on paid airspace
#3 The average consumer may not follow the value or think freight transportation is sexy — but supply chain managers and their bosses do, from manufacturing to distribution to retail, domestic and international
#4 “Green” is the new corporate citizen brass ring — and like the diversity push of the 1990s, many are scrambling to climb on the sustainability train (of which the “steel road” is one option)
#5 Given the incoming Obama Administration’s emphasis on reinvesting/renewing/reinventing US infrastructure, this campaign seems prescient, don’t you think?
To your point about the “new age of conversation”, what surprises me is that CSX doesn’t seem to have integrated new media / social media into their mix yet. I suspect that this gap is symptomatic of persistent belief that CXO types aren’t online yet. The trajectory from social marketing awareness and engagement entree to face-to-face deal making endgame hasn’t been proven yet in this gritty, industrial B2B world.
(Disclosure: For 2 years in the mid 1980s, I worked for CSX as a market manager. Everything has changed since then. Nothing has changed since then.)
Katherine Ventres Canipelli
“The Industrious Marketer”
http://www.twitter.com/kvcanipelli
December 31st, 2008 at 7:42 am
Katherine-
Thank you so much for your insights.
My company ships a lot (sometimes 100s of pallets a day) of product out of my location but, of course, it’s always on trucks. Every company I have worked for shipped with trucks. So, where is the decision to take a container off a truck and put it on a train made? Can my operations and shipping guys affect the routing of our stuff? I’m curious now.
Happy New Year.
Jeff
April 18th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
What’s interesting about freight strategy these days is that what you see at the loading dock isn’t always what it seems. Intermodal shipments look like truck at the loading point and the delivery point, but are conveyed for the long haul via rail (as well as steamship for international shipments). The substitution of rail for over-the-road trucking trades off transit time and consistency for reduced cost, without consequential impact on product integrity. In our research on how logistics strategies are developed, we’ve found that most companies route freight mode based on what’s been done in the past for any particular product; they’re not really assessing strategic options or optimizing total logistics operations. There just isn’t enough time in the day. But by the same token, if they could step back periodically and reassess freight strategy, they’d save $$$$, even if they paid a consultant to do the analysis.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Katherine Ventres Canipelli
You can find more insight about industrial B2B markets and how B2B execs gather info to make their decisions on our blog, The Industrious Marketer. http://www.marketingfolio.com/the-industrious-marketer
You may also follow me in Twitter — @kvcanipelli
April 18th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Katherine-
Thanks for checking in again. I do enjoy hearing about this stuff.
-Jeff