Bring a Trailer Acquired by Media Conglomerate Hearst Autos

Sigh, a conglomerate struggling to reach their target market, who is engaging with smaller more focused organic outlets, purchases one of the smaller successful outlets with visions of growing it's success, brand and capitalizing on it. 

Delusions of grandeur. They want to turn it into what the market and audience has already expressed that it doesn't want. Don't try to turn vanilla into Rocky Road and tell people it's better when vanilla is the number one selling flavor and the people knew what it was when they put it into their cart. 

One of the things that I love about GRM, is that the challenge is 1/3 drag race, and it is due the fact it's a measure of making power and putting it to the ground effectively. But the fine folks at GRM cognitive to the fact that we don't want to read articles about dialing in our 60-foot times and drag racing tech. They're aware of the fact that the market, even though drag racing is a major component of the competition within one of the biggest events of the year, isn't interested in consuming that content. 

Media conglomerates that lose viewership then obtain smaller upstart outlets, who have gained market share, then change said outlet to be more like "their vision" (and what viewers and readers left in the first place) are the definition of an abusive relationship. I can't wait to be told the Top 10 quirky French hatchbacks that I need to but today upon opening up Bring a Trailer one day in the near future. 

In reply to captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :

Well said

Good on BAT for selling. They put in a lot of work to create an interesting market and they're getting paid for it. My gut feeling is that they lost their original demographic in the last year or so anyway, so it will be interesting to see if this accelerates or reverses this. 

BAT has changed dramatically since the inception. It used to be a site that reported on interesting cars up for auction found around the web. Every single writeup mentioned the stance of the car :) See Daily Turismo for a very similar site that's aimed a little lower down in terms of price point.

Then they turned into an auction site and managed to nail the high end market nicely by curating the offerings and insisting on quality photography. They also rewrite the ads with a very skeptical tone ("seller claims...") that is almost the exact opposite of the enthusiasm they showed at the beginning. It is nothing like the site that it once was, but it's been a successful transition.

I don't believe that having a parent company is the kiss of death. It'll bring more awareness to the auctions. It'll give a bit of stability and access to more resources than BAT may have had on their own. I don't subscribe to the knee-jerk "big companies are bad" mindset, because there are a lot of very bad small companies out there.

Am I crazy or is BAT making money hand over fist? Companies like Hearst need to have digital strategies and BAT is probably a good fit. 

Meh. I lost interest when they started doing the auction bit. I like junk, what can I say. Good for the folks that got the big check from Hearst. 

CrustyRedXpress (Forum Supporter) said:

Am I crazy or is BAT making money hand over fist? Companies like Hearst need to have digital strategies and BAT is probably a good fit. 

Don't they only charge $100 to list a car? Do they get a cut of the final sale?

I don't think that big companies are bad, but I'm yet to personally observe an instance where an automotive media company acquiring an outlet had been benefitual for the outlet or the consumer. I also don't fault BaT for selling. In brewing there's a saying that's used, that's been borrowed from boat owners, that is the 2 happiest days of your life is the day that you open your brewery and the day that you sell it. Depending upon non-compete agreements and clauses, I feel that it's likely the same in many fields. Most successful people learn from the process and would do some things differently if given the chance for a mulligan. I'm a big proponent of 20 groups, established firms learn from smaller newly successful upstarts what's working for them in the market in attracting a customer base, and upstarts get guidance on upcoming challenges associated with growth. They learn from each other and make each other better and more competitive. But within automotive media, I feel that the big boys are, for the most part, either really dense to their shortcomings or really ignorant to the market and feel that upstarts have merely "found a new niche or trend" instead of realizing that they've been missing their mark. In turn they try to make the assets that they acquire fit their mold and formula, content deteriorates and the brand suffers. 

A touch of irony (and hope) is the R&T under Lieberman has mostly avoided this trap and been successful. He allows people to specialize, keep their voice and doesn't push them to be seen and contribute across every format and avenue. Other than having a lot available under a single umbrella and channel though, I'm not sure as to what the real benefit is to the consumer. 

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

 I'm a big proponent of 20 groups, established firms learn from smaller newly successful upstarts what's working for them in the market in attracting a customer base, and upstarts get guidance on upcoming challenges associated with growth. They learn from each other and make each other better and more competitive.

I've heard these described as "Groups of 12" or similar. Pretty sure you can trace them back to Ben Franklin's Junto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junto_(club)

it will be interesting to see what they change ,  

free auction if you subscribe to R+T ?