“certainty in uncertain times...”
 
Car dealer provides incentive plan during hard times. I thought this story idea was cool because I got it from a commercial. Hyundai is giving car owners who finance or lease a new car the option to return the car if they lose their income. My hope was to go to the Hyundai dealership and get an interview with the new car sales manager and then some customers who are excited about the new plan. I went to the Jefferson City dealership and when I got there, it was almost like the dealership was closed or something. NO CUSTOMERS... for the two hours I was there! It was 70 degrees outside, sunny, and a really nice afternoon. Personally, if I were to go car shopping, this would be the perfect day. I interviewed Joe Reagan of Reagan Automotive. He gave me the text-book, straight from corporate information. Then I started to get sequences and cutaways and kept an eye out on what the sales associates were doing. They just sat around and waited. From a distance, I got video of them leaning against cars, tapping their fingers, and playing ONLINE POKER! (hahahaha busted.) The online poker thing is a low blow so I won’t use it in my package but I just thought it was funny and really illustrated that they were bored and waiting for customers. My story obviously took a turn. I was thinking this new Hyundai plan would be attracting buyers in droves... but this was not the case. I interviewed an economics grad student and asked him what he thought about the plan. He believe it would encourage people to buy cars with money they didn’t have. This bit of info was the only thing I really didn’t have video for so I used it for my standup. I wanted to be really creative with “cars” and such so get excited! I wanted to convey that even though Hyundai has this great plan it wasn’t really worked. That these guys were literally standing around and waiting. According to Joe Reagan, the car industry has always been a roller coaster and it will get out of the slump eventually. That’s what Matt Sveum, the economist said about the economy as well. We won’t know how bad the recession is until it is over and it is going to take consumers to be confident in the economy before the spend again. It has just been a vicious cycle. ******************************************************** I have been following the Australia wildfires pretty closely. On CNN and MSNBC specifically. I think they both have accomplished the task of humanizing their coverage while keeping it interesting. It would be easy just to update on death tolls, damage and destruction. The media found people who were affected... even koalas! Overall, nicely done.
world of pickle
Sunday, February 15, 2009