Consumer Reports is a household name in key adult demographics. On the Web, their presence has only grown in importance as more big-ticket and durable goods purchasing decisions are made largely through online research.

And if there’s one sector highly dependent on trusted data, it’s car buying. By next year, an estimated 37 percent of all new car sales will be the direct result of online research, falling right into Consumer Reports clear competitive advantage.

The Challenge
Consumer Reports needs to build on its equity and awareness to continue their dominance of the crowded auto research market. In 2003, Forrester research concluded that Consumer Reports was considered by far the most important source of automotive information (74% of respondents) compared to all other non-automaker sites (68%) and even advice from friends (61%).

As this myriad of car-information site competition and funding grows, Consumer Reports was re-launching the new and used car price services, and rolling-out two completely new Car Kits that would be an extra charge for a wealth of information unavailable through the regular subscription. While these products all benefit from the high Consumer Reports standard for testing, and they also shared the challenge of standing out as a paid service in a sea of free, easy, and highly marketed competition.

Above all, Consumer Reports needed to do all of this with as little internal resources as possible. As they would work on the research it was our task to make it work for the audience in all the places they would visit.

The Process
Our content experts went to work, examining the Consumer reports messaging as well as the messaging and positioning of its chief competitors, and how Consumer Reports could put a fresh spin on these new products to gain share from people not already motivated to engage in the brand. More important, however was understanding all the content repurposing in down-channel portal partners like Yahoo! And MSN that are a key ingredient in pulling truly qualified candidates through to the paid report service.

Then, The Publishing Dynamics designers and content consultants evaluated the entire discourse, from email campaigns to partner sites, splash pages, and registration forms. By looking holistically at the way people learned about making car buying decisions, we could implicate the Consumer Reports products at natural times during the process, when prospects are most likely to take action with their wallets.

The Benefits
Publishing Dynamics helped Consumer Reports reassert themselves in the car-buying market through every available channel.

PD was able to deploy a number of engaging flash-based promotional applications. Addressing the needs of new-car buyers, we created the Virtual Dealership: a place where people could explore new cars in the dealership setting. This allowed them to not only get over their fears about going into a car dealership, but also with the idea that Consumer Reports’ Car Buying Kits are the important resource to facilitate this new-found confidence.

On the other end of the user spectrum, PD created an interactive presentation of Consumer Reports Top Ten Cars of the First 5o Years. Again, this experience drew in core car-lovers (and buyers). It reinforced the idea that Consumer Reports is the authority in car information, because they are in-tune with the best cars of the past.

The Flash interface allowed users to become engaged with the products in more of a fluid, broadcast sense than traditional static Web design. This enticed potential users to have a much higher involvement rate in the promotion, which made sure they stayed to see all the features and benefits the services had to offer.

On third party sites like Yahoo! and MSN, Publishing Dynamics took the information from our competitive analysis phase to design new layouts for the Consumer-reports information screens that displayed vital information the users were interested in a much clearer, more readable, visual presentation. Then, we developed individual styles for the formatting and branding of these pages that reflected the identity of the portal, while simultaneously adding value and clear identity for Consumer Reports’ value proposition. By marrying these design and interface styles, Consumer Reports was able to leverage the value of the portal to its users, as well as build more online equity and clicks in this crowded marketplace.

To close the loop on the discourse, we tied these promotional features in with compelling email campaigns, driving people to landing pages to funnel them through the sales cycle without losing interest. We were able to identify the user logic across multiple media and online habits to create series of pieces, starting with the emails themselves that would inform users and keep them clicking all the way through. We worked together to continue refining the messaging, placement and timing of future promotions to keep Consumer Reports on top of the Auto Research sector.

The Results
Consumer Reports did more than successfully re-launch plateauing products and introduce new services. With Publishing Dynamics involvement, they’ve seen more success than ever. Consumer Reports looks to PD as a strategic extension of their company. With minimal information in a time-poor environment, the content PD developed exceeded all of Consumer Reports’ goals.

The Flash-based applications received press in major magazines, the revamped third-party content saw a significant increase in consumerreports.org traffic, and the products delivered on the original goal: convincing both current and prospective subscribers that these Car Buying Kits deliver more value to the users’ car buying experience than any content that was available for free, as well as what they were already paying for.