I spotted the other day that Clinch have sponsored the English cricket team.

What is the definition of an analogue company?

Tom Harrison, the England and Wales Cricket Board ECB’s chief executive, said: “Cinch is a company which shares our determination to make cricket a game for everyone and as an innovative, digital business focused on making online car buying easy and safe for the UK’s motorists, it is a good fit as we seek to expand the reach and relevance of cricket.

If you don't know, Clinch are the rebranding of British Car Auctions (BCA) and a sister to webuyanycar.com - The idea behind it has been accelerated by the digital world and accelerated by covid.

In this article is quotes that "research conducted by BCA  found that 26% of car buyers (just over 2 million of the 7.9 million people per year who buy a car) don’t feel confident finding and buying a used car, while 31% find the process daunting, and 45% (over 3.5 million people) do not enjoy the process of finding and buying a car."

After all, who wants to spend their weekend walking around a car warehouse / showroom looking at cars.  We want to sit at homes with our iPads and just swipe.  This is what Cinch is all about. 

It's great digital innovation, but why did they seek an analogue approach to sales and marketing?

What is the definition of a digital company?

We all know that the modern buyer if they are swiping on an iPad will be on social media.

What are BMW doing?

BMW are social selling, example here.

I have written before about the sales responses that BMW are getting and converting on social, I've also written before about how they compared with Jaguar Land Rover.  In November 2019, BMW had 28 pieces of inbound from LinkedIn, of which they converted 14 of these to a sale.  Let's assume that a BMW is $50,000, that's (14 x $50,000 = $700,000) of additional revenue at $zero marketing spend.

That same month JLR went to the market saying they couldn't sell cars and were halting production.  They blamed Brexit and a UK General Election, but these were the same economic conditions that BMW were facing.  One business is digital, the other is analogue. 

This post about the Ford Cosworth is also a great example. 

Innovation is digital in sales and marketing today

I find it bizarre that a digitally innovated company like Clinch has decided to go down the analogue route (no pun intended) when the results for such as a directed are well known and don't created the visibility or the sales that a digital route will take.