By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer

An “integrated marketing plan” sounds like the natural result of a sound business process. Why wouldn’t a fleet provider’s marketing plan integrate all of the tactics in support of one set of goals?

Specifically, it makes sense that a company should use more than one medium to distribute a singular marketing message. A plan comprising different promotional methods ought to be designed so that each method reinforces the others. And, when there are multiple messages, distributed through multiple channels, they should relate to each other in support of an over-arching strategy.

Despite the methodical intent, however, many companies’ plans still suffer from marketing fragmentation. Since there are so many different marketing options available in today’s world, many companies find it difficult to select which media best fit their advertising and marketing needs. Then, they muddy the message in an attempt to address different targeted audiences.

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Business Know-How

Want to make your business networking more effective? Here are ten tips to keep in mind.

By Stephanie Speisman

Effective business networking is the linking together of individuals who, through trust and relationship building, become walking, talking advertisements for one another.

Keep in mind that networking is about being genuine and authentic, building trust and relationships, and seeing how you can help others.

Ask yourself what your goals are in participating in networking meetings so that you will pick groups that will help you get what you are looking for. Some meetings are based more on learning, making contacts, and/or volunteering rather than on strictly making business connections.

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By Mark Boada, Senior Editor

Fleet managers around the world, take note: you are about to enter the most innovative and tumultuous period the automotive world has experienced since the invention of the internal combustion engine, and you need to start preparing yourself for it now.

Be ready to change your identity from “fleet manager” to “manager of mobility.”

That’s the message from Lukas Neckermann, a London-based consultant and author of two highly regarded books, The Mobility Revolution and Corporate Mobility Breakthrough 2020.

Neckermann is the keynote speaker later this month at NAFA Fleet Management Association’s International Fleet Academy (IFA) in Tampa, Florida. The IFA will be held on Monday, April 24, the day before NAFA’s annual four-day Institute & Expo opens at the Tampa Convention Center.

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Newsweek

With all of the buzz from companies like BMW, Google and Tesla, it’s easy to get the impression that autonomous vehicles will be hitting the roads any day now, with an estimated 10 million self-driving cars shuttling passengers across the country by 2020.

However, in just the past few days, Uber ended up suspending and then slowly relaunching their self-driving car program after a high-impact crash.

Not the most promising start to a driverless future that is supposed to be a mere three years away.

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Forbes

If you’ve bought a new car in the last several years, there’s an increasing likelihood that when you take a look in the trunk, you’ll no longer find a spare tire.

At best in many cases you’ll get an emergency tire inflator kit that can be used to temporarily seal a puncture and re-pressurize the tire.

On many high-performance and premium models, you won’t even get one of those if it’s equipped with run-flat tires as the 2017 BMW 530i just drove was.

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Fortune

Andrew Salzberg, Uber’s Head of Transportation Policy and Research, this week declared the company’s support for road pricing, a plan that would have cities or transit authorities charge drivers for using roads during peak times.

Urban planners in recent decades have discovered that building more and bigger highways, surprisingly, doesn’t do much to reduce congestion (a phenomenon known as “induced demand”). Instead, as Salzberg puts it, “the cost of driving ultimately needs to reflect its cost to our cities.”

Such programs, also known as congestion pricing, have already helped reduce traffic in cities across Europe and Asia, but haven’t really caught on in the U.S.

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The New York Times

What can you — just one concerned person — do about global warming?

It may feel like a more urgent problem these days, with proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and each year warmer than the previous one.

You could drive a few miles fewer a year. Reduce your speed. Turn down your thermostat in winter. Replace your incandescent light bulbs with LEDs. Reduce your meat consumption. Any one of those actions would help.

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Chicago Tribune

The driver of a pickup truck that collided with a church minibus in rural Texas, killing 13 people, apologized after the crash and acknowledged he had been texting while driving, a witness said Friday.

Jody Kuchler told The Associated Press he was driving behind the truck and had seen it moving erratically prior to the Wednesday collision on a two-lane road about 75 miles west of San Antonio,near the town of Concan. Kuchler said the truck had crossed the center line several times while he followed it.

“He kept going off the road and into oncoming traffic and he just kept doing that,” said Kuchler, who followed the truck for at least 15 minutes.

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USA Today

Ford Motor is in pole position when it comes to benefiting from the coming age of autonomous vehicles.

That’s the conclusion of a study released Monday by Navigant Research, which sells its in-depth surveys of energy and transportation markets to suppliers, policymakers and other industry stakeholders.

The Dearborn-based automaker took the top spot by demonstrating that it has the strategic vision and execution capabilities to both develop automated driving systems as well as deploy them across a range of mobility platforms.

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Wired

The rumble of a car’s internal combustion engine is so pervasive few people even notice it anymore.

Now consider what cities might sound like in the not-too-distant future when they teem with electric vehicles. The streets will be quiet—too quiet. And that presents a problem.

“Sound helps people be aware of cars,” says Kota Kobayashi, a designer at the studio Ustwo. “There’s a safety element to it.”

Electric cars emit only a faint hum, a problem Kobayashi and his colleagues spent two months pondering.

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