Bristol Article in Octane June '11 issue

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted by Peter Grace

As far as marketing is concerned, communication can simply be divided between paid (advertising, web etc) and unpaid (PR). And again, the simplest view of both is that paid gives you control of the message, and unpaid very little control at all.

Here's a good example of the latter. This dreadful review is what can happen when you shun the media. Eventually they get hold of an example that you have no control over and as one of the article comments says, it might the worst example out there.

Crook clearly had the opportunity to avoid this. He had the opportunity to supply a known good car which wouldn't come with the horror stories of the owner, who had presumably bought a secondhand lemon.

Thanks to the internet and the lack of alternative articles, the bad review remains near the top of the Google search results 6 years later! The best way to counter this is to drown it out/bury it with more positive reviews and some smart SEO. It would take months to achieve, but it can be done. You would of course need to have your cars test driven in order to achieve this.

Didn't Bristol engage a PR firm a couple of years ago....

[Peter Grace]

I personally thought the new website was just a tarting up of the original. There was not the level of investment that would begin to pit Bristol against a brand like Aston, for instance. There is a charming blog, which you would have thought Bristol particularly suitable for, Once Was England, and he won't post a story about them, citing a lack of any decent photography. It's true, I think, that no-one has ever taken a beautiful studio shot of a Bristol, and that speaks volumes. Not even the manufacturer has invested in a hero shot of their cars.

Putting the website into the hands of a PR company would not normally be the route you would take if you expected a stunning result. Some PR companies work really well with designers, but I don't think in this case a great job was done. PR people are wordsmiths, they don't usually excel in pictures. A case in point is the photo of the Fighter on the website. Why would you put it in front of an ugly old Victorian warehouse? This, to me, demonstrates a total lack of care, not understatement.

Another interesting blog, Made by Hand- the great Sartorial Debate, aimed mostly at tailors, makes an interesting point (somewhere in one of his articles) about technology vs bespoke. If you go and have a suit made at a Savile Row tailor, you are paying for something made largely by hand. Yes, they do have machines, and they do use them. But a Savile Row tailor, who makes so few suits a year, cannot afford some of the high tech sewing equipment that a big manufacturer like Canali can, making thousands of suits a year. So the process is not only slower, it's also flawed. The new machines are more precise and more 'perfect' in their results than any hand-stitched buttonhole or lapel can ever be. The Savile Row tailor, even the very best of them, can easily be criticised for bad sewing, taking shortcuts, or adopting new ideas in suit-making that don't work. This blog takes apart suits worth thousands of dollars, from very famous tailors, and often finds them wanting.

The artisans who make persian rugs often put a deliberate mistake in the weave. Because "only Allah is perfect".

That is the difference between bespoke and technology. So long as a Bristol is safe to drive, and so long as the manufacturer is prepared to iron out the bugs when an owner requests it, and so long as there are not too many faults with a new car (that the quality is evident), I can't see why you can't promote handmade with natural flaws over machine-made, perfect and without a soul.

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted by Peter Grace

I can't see why you can't promote handmade with natural flaws over machine-made, perfect and without a soul.

You can, but they don't.

I remember when TVR launched the new Tuscan Speed Six. On their web site they provided an enormous amount of information about the car, including a detailed story of how the car was developed and built, even down to the detail of the aluminium switch knobs and LED lights that they made themselves. The site was really well done, with nice photography and was a great example of using the web to create a valuable promotional tool. It's gone now of course, along with the company.

[Markus Berzborn]

The whole point about hand made suits and cars is not so much quality, it is perfect fit.
With mass-produced clothes and cars you choose from a pre-manufactured range and pick the product which suits you best. As opposed to this, bespoke products are made to fit the individual customer from the beginning on.
So this aspect should be stressed in marketing texts, rather than the quality of manual work.

Regards,
Markus