Shelley Pratt got her start with the Nissan Motor Company in 2006 as a model line specialist. She has held numerous roles at the Infiniti car brand ever since and most of those positions were not in marketing. This experience comes in handy for the brand’s chief marketer, as she truly understands the ins and outs of the company across departments, truly understanding its cars.
This career path has also allowed her to cultivate a life long love for the company. “I have a huge passion and a personal commitment to the brand because I’ve spent so much time working on it, growing it and trying to evolve it,” says Pratt.
Infiniti’s brand platform is to be ‘Human, Daring, Forward.’ This applies to all of the company’s work. Pratt approaches marketing like a startup in order to keep the work agile and fresh. The brand is currently focused on the new Infiniti QX80.
“We initially came out with some launch work and the sales weren’t 100% where we wanted them to be,” she explains. “So as a marketer we step back and we say, how can we help? Where are people falling out of the funnel? What could we be doing differently? We have a mantra to optimize everything. So we have a test and learn process in place because if it’s marketing and if it’s broken, we’re going to fix it.”
Brand Innovators caught up with Pratt from her office in Nashville to talk about brand storytelling, the transformation of the auto industry and why they are advertising during sports games and Bravo TV shows. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about how you are approaching telling your brand story?
Our brand is all about being ‘Human, Daring and Forward’ and sometimes it’s harder to lean into the daring part. Taking a step back and looking at this vehicle, being proud of it, making a more confident stance and approach in the way we go to marketing.
There’s a way that we could be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit bolder, how we can enhance the car a little bit differently. It has a bold stance. We need to make sure that we’re enhancing that and capitalizing on the fact that the design is different. We spent a lot of time talking about the interior and the technology. This is a great opportunity for us to say, let’s look at the design, let’s look at the prowess of it and how it’s one of the best vehicles on the market.
Can you talk about how you’re thinking about innovation?
Marketing is always innovative, which is what drew me to marketing. You’re on the cutting edge of everything. You’re meeting with partners from Meta to Google to Reddit and talking about what’s different on the horizon and what’s different in the media and marketing landscape. I love to dig in. We optimize everything. We have 85 tests and learns in place in marketing and media so we can see what’s working, what’s not working.
We hear a lot about AI. It’s something we’ve actually been using for quite a long time, but we’re talking about it more. And how can we be using some of these tools in creative? How can we use AI to make more localized marketing? If you’re in Dallas, how do you see a Dallas background? It feels a little bit more personal. And that’s on the creative side and on the media side. There’s so many innovative technologies to help find the right people.
There’s less waste in marketing and advertising. If you’re looking for a person in the market for a luxury vehicle, AI can help you find that person of where they’re consuming their media and how we can show up. If you’re in the market for a luxury vehicle, how do we find you? And especially if you’re coming off like a mass brand and you’re new to luxury, we find those people really like Infiniti.
How do you see the automotive market shaping up this year and how will that inform your marketing plans?
The automotive market is going through a transformative moment. I think we are going to have to be smarter, scrappier. We’re going to have to make sure we’re eliminating waste, using those tools to find the right customer instead of big, huge mass plays. There’s still a place for that because you have to grow awareness but how do you then foster those people that’ll fall into your competitive set of consideration? How do you get on the shopping list? And then personalization is really important. We all know that once we get something that feels more tailored to us, you’re more engaged with the brand. If you’re looking for a QX 60, I shouldn’t be serving you an ad for a QX 80.
How are you cultivating loyalty among people who are already driving your cars who may be trading in, upgrading and buying for other members of the family?
That leads back to ‘Human, Daring, Forward’ and how the customers are treated. Our retailers have some of the best experiences. You’re treated very, very well. And then for marketing, we have a big loyalty program. We use a lot of CRM tools where we’ll talk to customers and send them new advancements, we’ll remind them of Infiniti Premium Care. When you buy a vehicle, you get maintenance included for a few years. We want to remind customers to take advantage of that not just in our CRM, but also on social media.
How are we providing content that they think is engaging? We have the ‘Fans of Infiniti,’ where we ask people to send in images of their cars. We have some amazing photographers in our community. Two to three times a month, we post those and people love it.
What key marketing trends do you think that we’ll see across the business this year?
The main trends are really leaning into personalization, finding people and creating a relationship with customers. The more that we know about somebody and what they’re looking for, the better information we can share with them. If we already know what they’ve looked at on our website then we should be serving them ads of that car. It’s really just making sure that we’re taking away some of those barriers to entry so when they are coming in, we say, ‘I see you, I know what you need and here’s the information that you were looking for’ in a faster fashion.
Who are your main audiences and how are you reaching them?
Our main audiences are evolving media wise. We’re pretty equal split between male and female. We’ll show up in a couple areas. We know that when we run our ads in sports, people go to our website and seek more information. We’re also in places like Bravo, since we know our customers are there. It’s really knowing them and doing some audience research to understand how they have evolved over time.
We always had a target customer and knew everything about this target customer. But we took a step back and we thought, okay, yes, this person might be driving the car or purchasing the car, but it’s really about the couple. The family unit and how they both play a part in this purchase decision, even if one of them isn’t on the registration. So we look at how we address the family or the purchase deciders instead of just the one person that shows up on the registration.
The media is split and showing up in different places, whether it’s sports or the right premium cable networks. We have Erin Andrews that we work with for QX 60. She’s great because not only is she a mom, she’s showing all these different sides of being a mom. The content we captured with her is also great enough to run NFL placements because it’s contextually relevant.
The only other major change for us as we go into next year is looking at those that are new to luxury and how we can communicate to them better and bring them into Infiniti as their first luxury purchase. That’ll be a strategy shift for us as we go into next year.
