Vocational Day - Peugeot

My vocational day in Guadaloupe was spent at Peugeots car retail garage.

It was a really interesting day. It was interesting to see how a private company markets their goods in comparison to how a public company markets theirs.

At home, when we launch a campaign - for example a Government campaign on cycle safety or fostering we always accompany any of the promotional literature with our own local version. This way we can alter the national branding to be more localised so that it will have a bigger impact on the target audience.

At Peugeot they rely purely on their national branding to sell cars. So, whatever is used in France - is used in Guadaloupe - regardless of whether the target audience is the same. Different markets have different needs but this didnt seem to be taken into consideration which was interesting.

I found out that they use the same marketing methods as France but they miss out newspaper advertising. This is because the people of Guadaloupe dont read newspapers. Their whole culture is very much verbal and word of mouth. Of a population of 240,000 only 25,000 buy the local paper. They rely more on radio advertising.

It was interesting to find out that they do no communication to staff. Internal communications isnt seen as important although they have a very big workforce. I found this very interesting as staff are always a company's biggest asset.

A very worthwhile experience.