CANNES: Maven, a ride-sharing service from General Motors targeted mainly at millennials, is helping to fuel change inside the carmaker itself, as well as across the auto industry as a whole.
As a mobile app giving consumers the chance to rent vehicles by the hour in select US cities, Maven represents a very different business model than the big-ticket purchases that have traditionally been the cornerstone of GM's business.
"We're not a product, we're a service," Megan Stooke, Maven's Chief Marketing Officer, said at the 2016 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. (For more, including further details of its strategy, read Warc's exclusive report: Maven: GM's millennial-focused mobile play.)
General Motors' brands normally deal with extremely long lead times in areas such as planning and new product development, but Maven operates at something far closer to real time – as shown by its approach to measurement.
"One of the first days I was there, I said to somebody from GM, 'Where's this report?' And they said, 'We're going to do it on a monthly basis.' And I said, 'No, no, no. We need it on a daily basis'," said Stooke.
"We're measuring data to, pretty much on a daily basis, look at how we're tracking. And the beauty is that we're small; every dollar has to be working hard for us.
"And so we're making daily decisions about how we change our plans, how we go to market, what messaging we're giving, what platforms we're using."
Maven predicts that over 25m people will use "shared mobility" services by 2020, compared with approximately 1.6m at present.
And as the brand attempts to analyses its progress in this space, it will need to reconfigure its gauges of success, according to Stooke. "Really it's about: How are we going to lead in miles driven?" she said.
"It's not necessarily just about how many cars are sold and purchased, but how do we really change that currency? Or how do we look at miles driven as really what should be focused on, even as a measurement?"
As a mobile app giving consumers the chance to rent vehicles by the hour in select US cities, Maven represents a very different business model than the big-ticket purchases that have traditionally been the cornerstone of GM's business.
"We're not a product, we're a service," Megan Stooke, Maven's Chief Marketing Officer, said at the 2016 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. (For more, including further details of its strategy, read Warc's exclusive report: Maven: GM's millennial-focused mobile play.)
General Motors' brands normally deal with extremely long lead times in areas such as planning and new product development, but Maven operates at something far closer to real time – as shown by its approach to measurement.
"One of the first days I was there, I said to somebody from GM, 'Where's this report?' And they said, 'We're going to do it on a monthly basis.' And I said, 'No, no, no. We need it on a daily basis'," said Stooke.
"We're measuring data to, pretty much on a daily basis, look at how we're tracking. And the beauty is that we're small; every dollar has to be working hard for us.
"And so we're making daily decisions about how we change our plans, how we go to market, what messaging we're giving, what platforms we're using."
Maven predicts that over 25m people will use "shared mobility" services by 2020, compared with approximately 1.6m at present.
And as the brand attempts to analyses its progress in this space, it will need to reconfigure its gauges of success, according to Stooke. "Really it's about: How are we going to lead in miles driven?" she said.
"It's not necessarily just about how many cars are sold and purchased, but how do we really change that currency? Or how do we look at miles driven as really what should be focused on, even as a measurement?"
Data sourced from Warc
