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Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

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Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#21

Post by bradfa »

millzlane wrote: post #16

Honestly you can't trust a lot you see in ads. You can't even trust your manufacturer or the dealership selling the cars. Some brand new cars are sold with TSBs that haven't been fixed or addressed. I use https://www.carcomplaints.com/ when I'm shopping for a car to know which used cars to avoid.

TSBs are just that, technical service bulletins on how to fix a common issue. There's no requirement for a dealership to perform the TSB on a new car, a majority of cars with outstanding TSBs won't ever experience the problem the TSB addresses.

There IS however a requirement to fix any recalls before a car can be sold, at least in the USA. But there are MANY more TSBs than recalls.

My Honda Odyssey has a TSB for the transmission basically eating itself. The fix is a full transmission fluid change (3x drain and fill) and a firmware flash. My van is beyond the mileage where the dealer would do this under an extended warranty specific to this TSB, but I've never actually experienced any of the symptoms mentioned in the TSB. Van is a 2016 with 115k miles on it.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#22

Post by bradfa »

passwordoops wrote: post #19

One of the big revelations I had when I worked with a marketing team the first time was so long as you pay the fee and have a good enough write-up, you'll get just about any award. No one checks the claims, just waits for the check to clear. That year we "won" the Red Herring, WEF Innovator, and I want to say Red Dot, and a couple of others for stuff that was not innovative, nor applicable to half the stuff we claime…

These are generally referred to as "pay to play" awards. They're very common. People who are in the industry generally know which awards are real and which are just "pay to play" type. But for customers who aren't as clued in, more awards always looks better!

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#23

Post by omneity »

I work on [0] and we routinely get engaged by tech publications asking if we'd like to be featured in their upcoming article "Best Monitoring Software for 2023" (for example).

Some of them go as far as listing their prices for each position outright, or mention some bidding mechanism. And it's not your average obscure blogspam, no sir. There are household names in there as well.

In fact I'm suspecting that outside of a small minority of reporters with integrity, this shady practice is simply the default across industries.

We're taking a firm stand against this BS. But it does have impact on our marketing efforts.

[0]: https://monitoro.co

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#24

Post by didacticBuffalo »

omneity wrote: post #23

I work on [0] and we routinely get engaged by tech publications asking if we'd like to be featured in their upcoming article "Best Monitoring Software for 2023" (for example). Some of them go as far as listing their prices for each position outright, or mention some bidding mechanism. And it's not your average obscure blogspam, no sir. There are household names in there as well. In fact I'm suspecting that outside of…

Learned this years ago when trying to get a place in the Gartner magic quadrant for a small software shop. Was a pointless cash and resource drain.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#25

Post by gumby »

daft_pink wrote: post #8

Youi can't trust JD Power's awards because of methodology. Initial Quality is a useful metric for the manufacturer, but not htat useful for the consumer, because plenty of vehicle might have high initial quality, but low long term quality. I've found that JD Power's rankings of customer service for financial companies to be far more useful as customer service is useful to the consumer on an instant basis.

My understanding is that everything the JD Powers person said (quoted in the CR article) is probably true but irrelevant. I believe you can get them to make a study using criteria you choose. They then do a somewhat legit, or actually legit evaluation using those criteria and miracle dictu you are the best. It could be “cars with the paint that stays bright the longest” or “small, manual transmission cars with a defect rate in the top 10 of such manufacturers”. If you look closely at a couple of car ad that displays a top JD powers rating youll usually see that the two cars are top in slightly different standards.

So yes, consulting could be independent from ratings, and their evaluators really could be judging without considering the manufacturers, all just like CR…except the criteria themselves tip the scales.

I like CR even though I often don’t buy their top choices. Their top criteria aren’t always mine, but they explain why they rank, and also measure and report other criteria that are more important to me. So their reports still help me a lot. The JD Powerses of the world: not so much.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#26

Post by 1970-01-01 »

tomalpha wrote: post #9

I like to think some awards are less bad than others. See Autocar’s blog[1] about how they voted for the Car Of The Year award which they do every year. It seems to be reasonably transparent. [1] https://www.autocar.co.uk/opinion/new-cars/how-autocar-voted...

Be very careful with 'X of the Year' verbiage, especially at the end of the year. There are many publications that use this verbiage for awards, and stumbling upon them via Google or other means almost always results in biased and paid for opinions.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#27

Post by ghaff »

didacticBuffalo wrote: post #24
omneity wrote: post #23

I work on [0] and we routinely get engaged by tech publications asking if we'd like to be featured in their upcoming article "Best Monitoring Software for 2023" (for example). Some of them go as far as listing their prices for each position outright, or mention some bidding mechanism. And it's not your average obscure blogspam, no sir. There are household names in there as well. In fact I'm suspecting that outside of…

Learned this years ago when trying to get a place in the Gartner magic quadrant for a small software shop. Was a pointless cash and resource drain.

The thing with a company like Gartner isn't that they're explicitly biasing their results based on how much you pay them but the whole game is rigged in general against small companies unless they've made a real name for themselves outside of the big analyst channels.

- If they're not Gartner clients, the relevant analyst may just not be very familiar with them. There are a zillion little software companies out there, many of which do a crap job of explaining what they do and what their unique value is. (Go to a big tradeshow sometime and talk to booth staff.)

- Gartner's MQ requirements are very biased towards their enterprise clients. They want customer references and have a very detailed questionnaire that may not align very well with what a small software company can respond to and, yes, is a big time sink to even try.

- Gartner does some other reports that highlight what they consider innovative small companies or up and comers but generally speaking none of those are going to be in the upper right of an MQ.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#28

Post by tharakam »

Not sure why this article is focused on car ads. Nowadays, I ignore most of industry and many other awards.

E.g. "Ranked #1 as the most popular university among international students" (I saw this ad on a bus). It doesn't say anything about the quality of the education or the recognition.

You can trust customer reviews more than these awards.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#29

Post by registeredcorn »

bradfa wrote: post #22
passwordoops wrote: post #19

One of the big revelations I had when I worked with a marketing team the first time was so long as you pay the fee and have a good enough write-up, you'll get just about any award. No one checks the claims, just waits for the check to clear. That year we "won" the Red Herring, WEF Innovator, and I want to say Red Dot, and a couple of others for stuff that was not innovative, nor applicable to half the stuff we claime…

These are generally referred to as "pay to play" awards. They're very common. People who are in the industry generally know which awards are real and which are just "pay to play" type. But for customers who aren't as clued in, more awards always looks better!

Out of interest, can you think of any that are legit? I'd like to know what to keep an eye out for.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#30

Post by tomcam »

ThrowawayIP wrote: post #17
sdoering wrote: post #11

The same goes, if I remember my HR buddy correctly, for quite a few of those "best company to work at" awards. So if it isn't a reputable source, why trust any of this crap? It like all these logos that companies (or industry groups) invent and use as a trust icon on packaging. Just mostly crap. My So did an evaluation of those for food not long ago in Germany. Damn that was a real eye opener.

You have to remember, you (the car buyer, employee, or shopper) aren't the target for these awards. These award companies market to mid-senior level VPs who have spending power and want to approach senior company leaders with a good story for their end-of-year review & bonus evaluation. Nothing quite like the HR Director saying "Well under my leadership we were rated as one of the top 100 companies to work for!" But…

Damn, never thought of it that way
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