Free parking? Heck yeah, I'll buy a Caddy

Times are tough. Carmakers, with sales down nearly 13% through September, have reacted by slashing advertising budgets. General Motors, for example, canceled on the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards and the Emmys. Ford cut its advertising by more than 30% and dropped out of the top 10 advertisers in total spending for the first half of the year. Overall, automotive ad spending fell 8% through June, to $5.3 billion.

Inasmuch as advertising translates to sales, it seems like an unavoidable yet intractable death spiral. Cut ads, lose sales. Cut more ads, lose more sales.

Tom Garrett has a solution: free valet parking.

Garrett, the vice president of Garrett Associates, a Los Angeles industry marketing and management firm, has developed a low-cost advertising campaign that promises to sell people on Cadillac by offering them free parking at Southern California restaurants.

The concept is simple: Get them in their wallets. Patrons of area restaurants will arrive to discover that, today only, there's free valet parking. In front of the restaurant they find a shiny new Cadillac. And when they leave, they get an after-dinner mint along with a card-size invitation to an area Cadillac dealership.

This, explains Garrett, is grass-roots marketing at its best. "The premise is that traditional media is not as effective as it used to be," he said. More effective, he said, is the firsthand experience of "the economic goodwill we garner by giving people a gift." ...

... Just two years out of UCLA, Garrett says he applied his interest in politics and sustainability to the marketing challenges facing local dealers and felt that a "softer sell" would do the trick. He approached the Southern California Cadillac Dealers Assn. with his idea, and the group agreed to a trial program.

That trial began last night at the Anaheim Hilton, where 400 guests of the Orange County Auto Show's opening-night gala were saved from paying the standard $16 valet fee and were greeted by a shiny new CTS sedan. This Friday and Saturday, the free parking is at Mastro's Steakhouse in Thousand Oaks. And Oct. 17, the value valet will be in Long Beach, at L'Opera and at the Madison.

All told, Garrett plans to organize 25 such events by late November, all the while tracking the kind of squishy metrics that marketers love (impressions, anyone?), in the hopes that the dealers will sign up for more. For each event, Garrett says he charges about $2,500, which includes a $500 fee to the restaurant for hosting, plus $5 to $7 per car.

There will be no published schedule of the events, Garrett said, because the ambush element is key -- "it's more of an impactful experience when it's a surprise gift," he points out -- and rather than having an actual car salesperson on hand, restaurant patrons will be allowed to check out the Caddys essentially unmolested.

A 2009 Cadillac CTS starts out at $34,780, so it's probably safe to say the valet party won't be coming to Pink's.

-- Ken Bensinger

Photo of valet service at a Los Angeles restaurant by Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times; photo of a 2009 Cadillac CTS courtesy of General Motors

Comments

[Roman Snihurowych]

GM's gonna need a lot more free parking to get people into a Cadillac. Add in the costs of inevitable repairs from a GM car, the stares of disbelief, the derision from your friends and family and the terrible fuel economy and you've got yourself a money pit on wheels. Expensive though parking may be in Thousand Oaks, free parking isn't going to make up for a fraction of expenses related to Cadillac ownership.