Just over a month on, the last festivities of 2017 feel like a lifetime ago, but while the celebrations rolled in for the New Year, the automotive industry motored on, keeping cars rolling out of showrooms and on the roads.
Of course, those professionals – the sales executives, service advisors, technicians, product experts and bodyshop staff – weren’t just helping customers find their perfect car and keeping us mobile, they were busily videoing to make sure it was all done with a touch of magic, and a healthy dose of trust and transparency.
In fact, the industry was uploading video like never before. By the end of 2016, CitNOW had hit an impressive 10 million videos recorded in just over eight years. Quite fittingly, by 2017 this had raced to 17 million videos but what is even more impressive is that we started 2018 on over 18 million uploads.
To put that in perspective, in 2017 over 7.5 million videos were streamed on CitNOW’s servers (7,638,367 to be exact) – that’s a mighty increase of 45% over the 5.25 million streamed in 2016 in just one year. We’re already racing ahead to the next video milestone, with over 5,000 sites using CitNOW in 40 countries across the globe uploading over 31,000 videos every day.
Rather like those mileage moments when your faithful speedometer creeps over to the next ‘000, we had to have a mini-celebration to mark our 17th and 18th million videos and give their presenters a moment in the spotlight.
At 17 million, we had Alex Bushnell’s expert customer welcome to Drive Vauxhall in Leicester. Demonstrating a proactive approach to the customer sets foot in the showroom, Alex’s video gives that added personal touch to put the customer at ease.
Scroll forward another million, and product genius Claire at Arnold Clark Peugeot Mazda Kirkcaldy uploaded a very detailed and well thought-out presentation for a used car customer. While the Mazda 3 in question might have flown out of the showroom on looks alone, the addition of a video gave it even more ‘must-have’ factor, and meant the long distance-customer didn’t need to venture out in the snow.
Two simple but brilliant videos, these show the high standard of communications that today’s technology-driven customer has come to expect, and that our industry of presenters is delivering. In 2018, we’ll also be changing the way our customers upload photography with our new Web Video and Smart Image app, available now. Already, the photo album is growing too.
Don’t forget, if your video is Oscar-worthy you can enter it into the 2018 CitNOW Video Awards, to be held at London’s BAFTA on July 11. For more information on how to enter, please click here.
