AUTOMOTIVE WRITING: Enter The Dragon

China’s EV brands are conquering the UK market faster than Japan did in the 1970s. How BYD, MG, and others are reshaping British motoring through technology, pricing, and perfect timing.

Chinese EV Surge In U.K.

How China’s U.K. EV Assault Surpasses Japan’s Seventies Invasion.

There’s a familiar tremor running through the British motor trade. A certain déjà vu. The showroom floors, now electrified with pixel-heavy infotainment and suede-trimmed crossovers bearing names like BYD, Omoda and Jaecoo, are humming not just with battery current – but with history. We’ve seen this play out before. Back in the oil-slicked, strike-riddled 1970s, when Japanese badges like Datsun and Toyota crept into British driveways while the unions down at Cowley and Longbridge were still arguing over tea breaks.

But here’s the kicker: this isn’t just a rerun with better batteries. It’s something bigger, bolder, and infinitely faster.

Let’s rewind to the early 1960s. Britain was still clinging to its imperial swagger, and its car industry was a global heavyweight. We were second only to the Americans in output, churning out Cortinas, Minxes and Victors at a blistering pace. But beneath the bonnet lay a wheezing, smoke-belching machine that hadn’t seen a proper rebuild in decades. Chronic underinvestment, fractious management, and mass walkouts meant the rot was deep-set long before anyone uttered the word “Datsun”.

By the close of that decade, Japan had quietly overtaken us, not with muscle cars or motoring romance, but with small, efficient, no-nonsense machines that started every morning and didn’t eat their own gearboxes. British Leyland, our great white hope, was a bureaucratic Frankenstein built to paper over the cracks. The Japanese, meanwhile, had mastered kaizen, built factories that ran like Swiss watches, and tapped into a global shift toward smaller, thriftier motoring just in time for the 1973 oil crisis.

Now? Britain’s car industry still exists, but mostly as an assembly annex for global players; Jaguar Land Rover (Indian-owned), Mini (German), Nissan (Japanese). There’s no national champion, no coherent industrial policy, and certainly no answer to what’s happening in 2025.

If the Japanese invasion of the Seventies was a creeping tide, China’s EV offensive is a tsunami and it’s already at the top of the high street.

Brands like BYD aren’t interested in mimicking Europe. They’re not building cut-price Golfs or knock-off 3 Series. They’re building next-generation tech ecosystems, cars integrated with their own batteries, software, semiconductors and AI platforms. Vertical integration gives them control over cost, quality, and pace that would’ve made Soichiro Honda weep with envy.

MG, once the darling of leafy Home Counties motoring is now a Chinese spearhead, its ZS EV undercutting legacy rivals by thousands while offering more kit, more range and fewer reasons to say no. Omoda and Jaecoo, still unfamiliar to British tongues, are bringing cars that wouldn’t look out of place in a Mercedes showroom but cost the same as a base Focus.

Unlike the Japanese back in the day, these newcomers don’t need to earn trust through decades of reliability reports and mechanically sound mediocrity. They’ve entered a market that wants disruption. Today’s car buyer shops online, trusts tech reviews more than showroom patter, and is more concerned with charging speed and infotainment updates than whether the badge has a Le Mans win.

The Seventies were no picnic; oil shocks, inflation, a government more concerned with surviving until Thursday than with industrial strategy. But crucially, consumers shifted toward Japanese imports because of price and economy. The Datsun 120Y, the darling of driving school cars, wasn’t just cheaper, it went further on a gallon, didn’t need fettling every weekend, and looked vaguely modern compared to a Maxi.

Today, the driver isn’t petrol prices, it’s policy. The UK’s net-zero mandate has lit a fire under EV adoption, and with the 2030 ICE ban looming, demand is being turbocharged not by market whim, but by regulation.

The Chinese have timed it to perfection. While European and Japanese marques scramble to electrify ICE platforms and untangle semiconductor bottlenecks, Chinese firms are shipping fully electric, ground-up platforms by the boatload. And they’re doing it without the millstone of legacy dealerships or brand baggage.

The UK, still licking its post-Brexit wounds, has kept tariffs off the table. Although just this week has excluded Chinese EV from the £3750 EV Subsidy redux. Unlike the EU, which has slapped Chinese EVs with duties up to 45% and minimum pricing, Britain remains wide open. The logic? Lower prices accelerate EV adoption. There’s no domestic champion to shield, and Downing Street would rather see a car plant in Swindon even if it flies a red star than an empty field.

In the Seventies, faced with growing Japanese dominance, the UK government tried the polite approach: voluntary export restraints, 20% tariffs, and veiled threats in Hansard. It didn’t work and by the time ministers finished their brandy, Nissan was already laying foundations in Sunderland.

This time, we’re not even pretending to resist. Open markets, loose regulation, and generous tax incentives make the UK a Chinese dream. While Brussels rattles sabres, Whitehall rolls out the red carpet.

Strategically, it’s a gamble. We’re hoping that in return for market access, Chinese brands will localise production, build battery plants, and create jobs. It’s industrial policy by osmosis. If it works, we’ll get investment without picking winners. If it doesn’t, we’ll be left with a forecourt full of imports and no local stake in the future of motoring.

Let’s put it in context. Japanese brands took a decade to crack the UK market. Chinese brands have done it in less than five years. BYD sells more EVs than Volkswagen globally. Their battery division, CATL, probably supplies half the industry. This isn’t incremental progress it’s industrial domination.

Technologically, the difference is night and day. Japan gave us better-built Escorts. China is giving us cars that update over-the-air, offer Level 2 autonomy, and come with smartphone apps that track your tyre pressure from Tenerife, they’re also safe with the top 5 Star NCAP safety rating. The EV isn’t just a new drivetrain – it’s a software platform, and China with 1.5 Billion inhabitants to test new tech on is miles ahead on that front. They can launch in foreign markets with proven new tech.

British car buyers in the 1970s were brand-loyal, suspicious of imports, and only changed their tune after being burned too many times by dodgy electricals and engines that were engineered to throw con-rods for fun at sixty five thousand miles (cough Ford). Today’s buyers are patently open to new brands and don’t care where a car is built – they care if it syncs with Spotify and charges in under 30 minutes.

Younger buyers, the key demographic for EVs, have no nostalgic attachment to Ford or Vauxhall. They trust influencers more than dealers. They’re digital natives in a world where Tesla has already redefined what a car can be and how it’s sold. Chinese brands, with their TikTok-savvy launches and online sales funnels, get this. The legacy players mostly don’t.

Will Chinese EVs kill off what remains of the British car industry? Unlikely, it’s already on life support. But they will dictate the pace, the technology, and the price point of Britain’s motoring future. That, more than anything, is the lesson we should have learned in the Seventies.

Then, we tried to shield British brands behind tariffs and pride. Now, we’ve flung the gates open and invited the dragon to dinner.

POSTSCRIPT:

In the Eighties, the Japanese built factories here. They hired local. They became part of the landscape. The Chinese? That’s still up in the air. The smart money says we’ll see BYD or Chery setting up UK operations soon – if not for patriotism, then for EU access via a tariff-free back door.

And when they do, remember this: we weren’t conquered. We just let them in. Smiling, silent, and WiFi-enabled – and that, is another story.

DIGITAL MARKETING: 2025 Developments You Cannot Ignore. Pt.1

The first of a five part post on the key developments in digital marketing that businesses should be aware of in 2025.

Part 1. AI Integration in Marketing.

In 2025, AI integration stands as a transformative force in digital marketing, shifting from a luxury to a fundamental necessity for competitive advantage. By leveraging advanced AI technologies, businesses can now orchestrate hyper-personalised customer experiences across all touch-points while simultaneously reducing operational overhead. The technology excels at processing vast amounts of customer data to predict behaviours, automate content creation and optimisation, and deliver real-time personalisation at scale. For example, AI powered tools can analyse customer interactions across multiple channels, automatically adjust campaign parameters for optimal performance, and generate tailored content that resonates with specific audience segments. This intelligent automation allows marketing teams to focus on strategic initiatives while AI handles the heavy lifting of data analysis, routine content creation, and campaign optimisation. The key to success lies in striking the right balance between AI automation and human creativity using AI to enhance rather than replace human insight, ultimately driving more efficient, data-driven marketing decisions that deliver measurable business outcomes.

Advanced AI-powered content creation and optimisation.
– AI can now analyse vast amounts of historical content performance data to identify patterns in what resonates with specific audiences.
– Tools can generate initial drafts of marketing copy, blog posts, and social media content while maintaining brand voice.
– Automated A/B testing helps optimise headlines, email subject lines, and ad copy in real-time.
– Dynamic content optimisation adjusts website and landing page content based on visitor behaviour and preferences.
– AI can analyse competitor content and identify gaps in your content strategy.

More sophisticated predictive analytics for customer behaviour.
– Machine learning models can identify customers most likely to churn and recommend retention strategies.
– AI analyses purchase patterns to predict future buying behaviour and optimal times for engagement.
– Behavioural scoring models help prioritise leads based on likelihood to convert.
– Advanced segmentation identifies micro-segments for more targeted marketing.
– Predictive lifetime value calculations help optimise customer acquisition costs.

Automated personalisation at scale.
– Dynamic pricing adjusts based on individual customer behaviour and market conditions.
– Product recommendations evolve in real-time based on browsing and purchase history.
– Email content and send times are optimised for each recipient.
– Website experiences adapt to individual user preferences and behaviour patterns.
– Personalised retargeting campaigns based on specific user interactions.

AI driven chatbots and customer service solutions.
– Natural language processing enables more human-like conversations.
– Chatbots can handle complex queries and seamlessly escalate to human agents when needed.
– 24/7 automated customer support with multilingual capabilities.
– Proactive engagement based on user behaviour triggers.
– Integration with CRM systems for personalised responses based on customer history.

One key aspect worth noting is that while AI tools are becoming more sophisticated, they work best when combined with human oversight and strategic direction. The goal is to augment human capabilities rather than replace them entirely.

If you are interested in any particular application or to discuss how these AI solutions might specifically benefit your business please contact me.

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MARKETING: The Weak Ad Threat

I spend time researching advertising and too often struck by weak, unfocused and what can only be described as complacent ads.

Advertisements without a strong call to action (CTA) are burning money. Here’s why:

The CTA Imperative. Without a clear directive, potential customers are left confused and unmotivated. CTAs serve as critical signposts guiding users toward the next step in their customer journey.

👀 Key Pitfalls of Weak Copy
– No clear user direction
– Missed conversion opportunities
– Reduced audience engagement
– Lack of psychological motivation

✅ Pro Tips for Improvement
– Use strong, action-oriented verbs
– Create a sense of urgency
– Make CTAs visually prominent
– Clearly communicate the value proposition

Remember: Your copy should not just inform, but ‘inspire action’. Every advertisement is an opportunity to convert interest into tangible results. If the advert is aimed at a specific sector or group have follow up adverts ready to run as a reminder and to be consistent.

Run the rule over each ad.

✅ Great headline

✅ Engaging & informative copy

✅ Call To Action

It’s not 💥💥💥🚀

 

First published on Linked-in.

Contact me if my ‘Do The Simple Things Well’ philosophy resonates.

As ever Like, Share & Follow my social media posts the links are above. 

ADVERTISING: Old School Ogilvy For Today

David Ogilvy, often called ‘The Father of Advertising’ revolutionised the industry with his iconic campaigns. A great observer of detail, his constantly finessed drafts and final adverts combined meticulous research, storytelling and creativity to captivate and resonate with audiences.Here are some of his greatest works and iconic campaigns and how his style can still inspire contemporary advertising. As an enthusiast of old school copy ads from the Fifties and Sixties they are published here complete:
Rolls Royce (“At 60 Miles an Hour”) Known for its now legendary powerful headline, “At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock” it highlighted product specifics and luxury.
Dove (“One Quarter Moisturising Cream”) Ogilvy repositioned Dove which was struggling for recognition and market share as a “beauty bar,” not just soap, elevating its status and creating a long lasting brand identity.
Guinness (“The Guinness Guide to Oysters”) This series of educational ads paired Guinness with food, blending information with elegance to enhance its sophistication.
Schweppes (“Commander Whitehead”) Featuring the company’s president, this ad exuded authenticity and sophistication, tying the brand to exclusivity.Hathaway Shirt (“The Man in the Hathaway Shirt”). Featuring a man with an eye patch, this ad used “story appeal” to intrigue viewers. The mysterious element drew attention, making the brand memorable.

So here’s the meat in the sandwich as a friend says.

Contemporary Applications of Ogilvy’s Style :

Storytelling with Visual Hooks: Modern brands can emulate Ogilvy’s “story appeal” by using intriguing visuals or unexpected elements in social media campaigns.

Data Driven Headlines & Content: Like Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce ad, brands should craft specific, benefit driven headlines for digital ads to boost engagement.

Authenticity in Branding: Using real people (e.g., founders) in campaigns resonates today, especially on platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram.

Personal Brand: The ‘Commander Whitehead’ as pictured in the Schweppes adverts is an obvious spin-off personal branding opportunity today.

Educational Content Marketing: Ogilvy’s Guinness and Dove campaigns show the power of educating consumers about product benefits aka solving a problem too. A strategy effective in blogs and video content.

In summary, David Ogilvy’s timeless principles truthful storytelling, captivating visuals, and product focused messaging remain essential for modern marketers.

Who are your advertising and copywriting heroes?

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Specialising in effective website and digital marketing content, Steve Coulter is a U.K. based copywriter and content professional with a lifetime interest in advertising and marketing.

CASE STUDY: Change Of Trading Style.

Objective

With a limited budget organically increase the used car enquiries and online visibility of a former Stellantis New Car Franchise nowadays Used Car Sales, Service & Parts.

Included:

Current Marketing Strategy Analysis

Carried out a comprehensive business SWOT Analysis

Agree Goals of increase sales, local awareness, increase website traffic

While maintaining the high customer satisfaction net positive score.

Strategy:

Using Canva created a new modern brand appearance across all advertising. Consistency

Comprehensively improved Google Business Page (GBP) content and encouraged customer reviews to increase net score. Trust

Joined local forums, posting regularly and interacting with local people. Educating & Authoritative

Standardised and vastly improved content descriptions and photography with a dedicated You Tube channel with each car video uploaded and links back to website. You Tube is a great search engine too

SEO website and specific content pages pertinent to the makes and models of cars now being sold.

 

Results:

Uplift in visitors to website. +26% over 4 months.

Increased the quality of content in line with the latest Google algorithm.

Featured at Number 1 and in Top 3 in Google Local Search across many search terms relating to the new business style. Great organic reach improvement

Great feedback from new Facebook interactions.

Increased review score to 4.7/5.0 from 200+ reviews

Corresponding uplift in sales and stock turn.

 

This was a business development and digital marketing project.

 

 

 

 

DIGITAL MARKETING: Money Matters.

We are all motivated or many people would remain in bed all day. The essentials of life have to be accounted for with whatever we can earn. But to achieve more than basic needs we need a driver. A great example is a mortgage. We all want to pay off our mortgage, but actually, having that ball and chain is a driver to earn more to pay what can be an amount that wildly fluctuates as a percentage of our income in our lifetimes. Somewhere you find the money for the home you thought you could not afford. After conducting an autopsy of my own working life and expenditure I believe having a permanent mortgage would have been beneficial. Obviously age and health are pertinent. Where am I going with this?

If you don’t have a budget to start a business you don’t have a business. Don’t start a business if you don’t have six months income set aside too. Investing £x 000 in the start up essentials of a modern enterprise like a sophisticated website not only gives your business an anchor, but somewhere to market to and from and capture prospect data. Repaying initial costs is part of your driver to establish a thriving business and go the extra mile to secure sales. You can also offset against taxable income so it’s less than its actual invoice price. It’s only the modern world where clicks have replaced bricks that not having any premises to trade from could even be contemplated. Before Y2K you couldn’t open a shop without acquiring one, rent or buy. You wouldn’t open a shop right next to another one either unless demand suggested it were viable. Social media has exacerbated the problem. Yes, Instagram, Tik Tok or Twitter is virtually free to use but it’s not as effective as paying for a targeted professional campaign aimed at a specific product or service. Or the data you can extrapolate for next time and who it turns out is your customer.

How much of your start up funds would you invest in a website and marketing to drive traffic?

SOCIAL MEDIA: Video Killed The Literary Star

The Rise Of Instagram Reels Video & TikTok over static images. The new 2021 Instagram Algortihm.

Earlier today on Clubhouse Social Audio during the 4:13 Leadership forum I was asked to compare marketing online now versus twenty years ago. Categorically I would say it’s far more sophisticated, much lower cost, far more effective and offers high quality metrics to measure your efforts and spend. As they say, you cannot manage what you cannot measure. But as far as some platforms are concerned the writing associated with posts is becoming redundant in favour of video for a generation with very short attention spans.

Where platform leaders go, others follow. So with this in mind we are all going to have to consider how we can promote our businesses within the realms of 30 second short video and longer forms of 5 to 15 minutes of content. Influenced by the success of TikTok amongst it’s key demographic, Instagram are moving towards being more of a video than photography platform and ranking Reels use far greater in the algorithm. Post Likes are being dropped in favour of Saves and Shares so it’s vital you encourage followers to support your efforts by doing this with your posts.

I don’t believe the original developers of Instagram ever envisaged that it would be so heavily used by business marketers and like everything in business we should all have a Plan B ready should Plan A be lost to us. Thus we need to develop our use of video in a market sympathetic way, and find alternatives to support the graphics and photography we use as a lead magnet presently. With this in mind, Pinterest looks like a safe harbour and I’ll be looking into this platform next.
 
Instagram is still a heavily used platform so I would continue to post as you are until your analysis shows a diminished return on your time.

DIGITAL MARKETING: Brief Take On Domain Authority

With Internet development, a website’s Authority is a compound metric used for measuring a domain or individual web page’s overall quality and SEO performance particularly against other websites within a similar realm. The score is based upon many metrics representing authority within the field and trustworthiness. Machine Learning (ML) ensures the result is fresh so do not expect to get 100 – it’s a moving target for you to continuously improve and attempt to remain in the top quartile.

The old days of recent, relevant and frequent posts that determined your website’s position in the major search engines list of results has been replaced by a more sophisticated approach. None of the engines officially publish how they rank your site but it is generally accepted the following is instrumental.

Initially an algorithm uses organic search data, web traffic, and back link information to understand the ranking of the most trusted domains on the web. Then a second algorithm uses backlink data compares how your site wins or loses authority by gaining links. The number and own authority of referring domains. The volume of outbound links from referring domains. The total number of IPs and backlinks pointing to the site. Plus further esoteric information.

The measurement is within a range of 1 to 100 with very few domains scoring late nineties.

In my previous post ‘Discoverability’ I described tuning your website and good housekeeping before approaching other businesses within your realm to link to your site – and therefore positively affect your Domain Authority (DA) score. In this respect there is no ‘Good Score’. Obviously you don’t want to be zero and under fifty would highlight obvious improvements that need to be made, but whatever your score, even improving the content, SEO and backlinks for your site may not improve the score if ML comparison websites have also improved or further authoritative sites have been added to the subset and less authoritative dropped.

I’ve mentioned before in Social Selling posts that ‘niching down on a niche’ is the way forward for marketing SME sized companies online in highly competitive fields to become a trusted leader within that particular industry and this is relevant with DA. Ordinarily, you may think that linking to a blog or site with a lower score would be disadvantageous, but in fact, within a niche it could help your own DA. The important thing is to compare your DA with competitors to ensure that your SEO and recently published content is working and giving you a higher rank in search engine’s result lists.

In summary. If a domain score is upwards then a concerted effort with SEO may be yielding results. It may though be that a competitor has fallen back. You see, it’s not a simple yes or no. Heading downwards could indicate a very competitive niche, lack of effort with SEO.

Link building to sites that do not already link with you, listing on trusted directories, mentions in respected articles online (linked) and eradicating broken links or links to toxic sites will all improve your DA.

Astute use of keywords within your content, titles and tags are also a great way of positively influencing this.
 
An analogy may also be, you wouldn’t expect to run a takeaway food business of the scale of MacDonald’s, Burger King or KFC, but you could aim to be the ‘best of the rest’ more achievable and far less frustrating!