Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Waxing nostalgic a tough sell for millennials
Millennials don’t love their cars the way their elders did, and if you make car wax, that’s a problem.
“Going after 20-andunders is something we haven’t had to do in a long time,” said RJ de Vera, global customer engagement leader at Meguiar’s, one of the largest car care product manufacturers, which is owned by 3M.
As baby boomer car buffs age out, Meguiar’s and competitors such as Turtle Wax, Mothers, Collinite and others must court a generation that is the first to largely find car ownership a headache and driving a chore — and see cars as an encumbrance rather than a status symbol.
Makers of car-care products have had to adapt marketing strategies, trying to deal with customers’ differing demands even as producers of small-batch boutique waxes try to cherry-pick their most valuable customers, and as professional detailers trade wax for advanced compounds.
For Turtle Wax, the warning came around 2013. “Our sales had started to soften,” said Kelly Cagney, director of global brand strategy and marketing communications.
De Vera had been observing a slow degradation since around 2007, as car show attendance dropped, car magazines collapsed and cars failed to capture the imagination of kids as they once did. “Even my nephews,” he said. “I remember being 8 or 10 and really into cars, and they didn’t care at all.”
Attracting younger buyers has required a strategic shift to social media, video gaming and events. Turtle Wax has been placing ads on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and in the past via Xbox. Meguiar’s will have its brand appear in CSR Racing 2, a video game for mobile devices, and it has been holding meet-and-greet events with influential social media personalities such as TJ Hunt. Last year, Turtle Wax hosted 60 YouTube personalities at OTTO, an exotic car club in Arizona, where, among other activities, they took a detailing class. “We have full immersive experience that they took back to their followers,” Cagney said.