Show time

‘I’d attend the opening of an envelope for a sandwich and a snifter’

Over the course of one week I was invited to three launch events at local dealerships. I’ve been around long enough to receive invites from dealers to make their showroom look busy. As the saying goes, I’d attend the opening of an envelope for a sandwich and a snifter.

Honda kicked things off with the launch of the new Civic. While undoubtedly well engineered, it’s bloody ugly and surprisingly large. However, we are here to discuss hospitality, not cars. That event was on a Thursday evening and featured nibbles, drinks and mood lighting. This was just like we used to do at Rover. After-hours events like this have a nice atmosphere as many aftersales staff stay on for freebies.

The next event was for the BMW 5-Series. Clearly, prospective 5-Series customers are too busy on a Thursday evening to attend a preview event. So this launch was held over the weekend. Presumably the prospective customers popped in to discuss PCPS between golf courses? It had nice food and drink and a genial atmosphere as attendees murmured their approval of the last bastion of straight-sixes.

The final event of the week was for the Skoda Kodiaq. Now this is a very impressive car, not so much for the concept, but for the detailing. These cars will be a surefire hit. But the gig was on a Sunday at 7pm. You read that right. I expected hospitality to be off the scale: maybe a celebrity chef and a club singer?

All sales staff were called in for a back-shift regardless if it was their day off. Some weary staff had already worked 18 hours since Saturday morning. Skoda UK had shipped in a car from Finland and provided marketing staff. But when I realised this was a ‘dry’ do and that there was only one car on display – a left-hooker – I was gutted.

I haven’t been sober on a Sunday evening for donkeys. I was therefore in super-critical mode. Nevertheless, when the beautiful girl from Skoda started talking, I was attentive.

“Skoda have doubled their sales in 5 to 10 years,” she told us.

“That’s a fair old margin of error,” I thought to myself.

But there were more words of wisdom from this no-doubt Doctor of Marketing who’d been parachuted in: “That means our sales have gone from 40,000 to… er…”

She looked down, rustled her papers, did a bit of speed reading, then gave a confident look to the audience, who were collectively mumbling a chant of “80,000”. “…to 80,000!” The audience breathed a sigh of relief as she got her maths right.

Just so we were crystal clear, she reiterated: “So in 2008 we sold 40,000 cars and last year we sold 80,000 cars”.

“That’s eight years, not five or 10,” I muttered to a former colleague.

“I bet she got someone to sit her FSA exams for her,” he whispered. All around us there was applause for her and the car. I made my excuses and left, because the bingo was starting at the club and I desperately needed a spritzer.