Creating a culture of innovation

A culture of innovation means creativity and new ideas become central to the internal environment of the business. It is a part of day to day decision making through to medium and longer term planning. A culture of innovation is very much reflected in the application of software technology that underpins the carsales.com web-based buying and selling experience, but is evident in many other areas of the business. Some of these are as follows:

• As the use of mobile phones continues to grow beyond just a facility to make calls and send messages, carsales.com has developed mobile websites to optimise viewing on customer mobiles and making it more convenient.The company made use of satisfied customers who had contacted the company by engaging them in the development of a new advertising campaign titled ‘Real people. Real results.’ (see example below).

• In late 2009 carsales.com established an innovative social media strategy for the business. This included establishing a ‘Social School’ – an initiative to recruit and train internal staff to become ‘Community Members’ responsible for updating and managing the company’s Facebook and Twitter portals in the correct tone of voice. A related policy was developed that established rules and regulations about using social media in a business form to help ensure that responses to posts were handled in a professional and dignified tone and that no confidential information was posted in these areas. carsales.com use their social media outlets to update followers with the latest company and auto industry news and respond to any customer service queries.