Automotive Market Intelligence

Arming a 75-year-old automotive marketing firm with the intelligence and strategy needed to compete following a post-pandemic market shift

//The Challenge

Covid-19 dramatically changed the competitive landscape for an automotive marketing company. All of a sudden, people weren’t visiting car dealerships and lifelong clients no longer needed their services, choosing instead to work with other companies that offered more robust services. For the first time, the future looked unclear for the 75 year old company. Previously immune to tech changes and disruptions, the automotive industry was quickly changing and the layout and fixture provider wasn’t equipped to compete. The company needed to quickly identify trends, emerging technology and uncover new competitors to develop a market-leading strategy.

Service Line:

Growth & Innovation

Industry:

Automotive Marketing

Region:

North America

Goal:

Understand the market and compete effectively

Strategy:

AI-powered market research

Results:

Future-looking strategy to ensure the company can effectively compete in a vastly different market

//The Solution

The automotive marketing company reached out to Manifold for help, knowing that Manifold’s collaborative and tech-forward approach to market research could quickly help them understand new market dynamics and the competitors involved.

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The engagement began with a broad look at competitors. Manifold used Pitchbook and CBInsight to amass a 250-company-long list of competitors in the automotive space, then turned to Speciate, Manifold's AI-powered market monitoring solution for support. With Speciate, Manifold was able to narrow the list based on a specific variable: the frequency of mention of the 250 companies in conjunction with car industry topics in news articles. The new list provided a manageable and meaningful competitor set for strategic decision-making.

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In parallel, Manifold searched for risks and threats by scanning news, articles, and publications of competitors and OEMs to determine new technologies that could threaten the company.

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A key to the successful outcome was interviews in close collaboration with the client. Manifold involved stakeholders throughout the project, delivering and presenting key insights during weekly calls and updates. The regular, open communication with the client allowed Manifold to refine its hypotheses throughout the engagement and leverage the client’s insider knowledge and experience.

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//The Results

In just one month, from start to finish, Manifold delivered a complete competitive analysis to help the automotive marketing company prepare for the future. The report included:

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Prioritization of market trends based on their impact to the company and the sentiment score of that trend.
Current vs. future customer journey, identifying what part of a customer’s purchase journey occurred online, in-person, or hybrid prior to 2019.
Competitive intensity by segment to understand the direct and adjacent business lines.
Customer competitor mapping, which examined which vendors were used by key OEMs, based on vendor case studies.
Competitor prioritization using specific criteria on a “few to many” scale. The criteria included: relevant case studies on the company website, whether former employees worked at the competitor’s company, or if there were any private equity or venture capital-backed acquisitions.
Competitor segment mapping, which examined competitors’ service lines which were present within the segment.
Frequency of mention analysis which highlighted the amount of coverage for each competitor within a database of over 50 million documents.