With so many options and so much information out there, how can you know what is working for your business, and what isn’t? How can you create a marketing strategy that will work today?

By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer

From time to time, I receive ideas from Fleet Management Weekly “A Call to Action” column readers. Last month’s column evoked a suggestion from Anna K of Connex Direct Marketing to reprint her article entitled “Four Key Steps Toward Successful Marketing Communication. It is a great read with plenty of ideas for fleet industry firms interested in better marketing. Here is part one of that article:

In our hyper-technological world, communication methods change at an incredibly rapid pace.

First, there was email, then message boards, then instant messaging, then MySpace and Friendster, and now Facebook, Instagram, chatbots, Netflix, and dozens of other communication methods.

There are always new technologies and new ways for people to interact with others. This is also true when it comes to marketing methods and the tools that are available for marketing.

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Here’s another step forward in the mobility revolution: Drivy, a French-based company that helps people share their vehicles, has just rolled out the same service for fleets in the United Kingdom.

To take full advantage of the service, fleet vehicles need to be equipped with the company’s “Drivy Open” technology. Fleets can then set their own rates for renting out their idle vehicles, typically ranging from £37 to £202 (roughly $49 to $265).

Katy Medlock, Drivy’s U.K. managing director, says, “Vehicle availability can be set by the owner on the platform via the app or the website. Drivy keeps it very user-friendly and in favour of owners, giving them almost full control of every aspect of their cars and trips. It’s also very easy to set available times for different cars.”

Read the article at Fleet World.

Land Line Magazine

Earlier this month, the jury in a case against Frac Tech Services International in the district court in Upshur County, Texas, awarded Joshua Patterson about $101 million.

Although the jury found the trucker to be 70 percent at fault and FTS 30 percent responsible for the crash, the big payout came when the jury calculated Frac Tech’s negligence at $75 million.

The lawsuit claims that Bill Acker was driving under the influence of drugs before and at the time of the collision. Despite FTS knowing about several policies that prohibited Acker from driving, the company hired him anyway. Essentially, the case was based around the idea that FTS should have never “recklessly employed” Acker, let alone entrusted him in driving a truck.

Read the article at Land Line Magazine.

The Washington Post

The fact that a crash of a driverless car receives extraordinary media attention, even if the autonomous vehicle is not at fault, may have fueled the results of an online survey that found that 61 percent of Americans said they were not ready to ride in self-driving cars.

Consumer groups are pushing back against what they say is a flawed effort in Congress to regulate the vehicles, although 94 percent of car crashes are caused by human error and most traffic fatalities in 2016 were caused by three factors that fully autonomous cars might eliminate: distracted driving, drunken driving and speeding.

Read the article at The Washington Post.

MSN

Ford is considering bringing a subcompact pickup truck to the US. It will be built with the same unibody that will be used on the next-generation Ford Focus.

This new subcompact pickup isn’t exclusively for the US. It’s actually a replacement for the Brazilian-market Courier, which was based on a 1998 Fiesta platform. It has a regular cab design and a modest box out back with a load capacity about 1,500 pounds.

Read the article at MSN.

By Bernie Kavanagh

Imagine waking up one day to no fuel, damaged roads, and unknown damage to your fleet.

It’s the ultimate nightmare for a business with any exposure at all to mobility.

Historically, the most damaging tropical storms and hurricanes have occurred in August and September. But officials who manage fleets, fueling systems and transportation networks should be implementing best practices now in order to avoid a doomsday scenario later.

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Wired

Members of Uber, Bell and Terrafugia, three companies with ambitious plans to launch flying taxi services in the next few years, were present at a recent two-hour meeting of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology. They believe that it will probably be harder and take longer to approve flying passenger vehicles than most people think.

John-Paul Clarke, an aerospace engineer at Georgia Tech and member of a National Academy of Science panel said he foresees a future where the FAA sets minimum standards, and then each city hires its own private air traffic controllers.

Read the article at Wired.

Entrepreneur

Jumping into any new role or working in a new industry that you’re not always familiar with can feel overwhelming and even intimidating.

Deb Liu, the Vice President of Marketplace at Facebook has learned many lessons the hard way throughout her career in the tech industry, and is sharing 10 pieces of advice with the hopes that they will help others with their careers.

1. Confidence is a gift you give yourself.

One of the things I struggle with the most is mentoring people who lack self confidence who I know are stronger than they think. Nothing I say seems to change how they feel about themselves because they can’t see what others see in them.

Read the article at Entrepreneur.

The New York Times

Trump’s plan to roll back a major environmental rule and let cars emit more tailpipe pollution, could split the American car market in two.

On one side is the Environmental Protection Agency’s acting chief, Andrew Wheeler, who fears its legal and technical arguments are weak and will set up the Trump administration for an embarrassing courtroom loss.

On the other side are top officials at the Transportation Department, Jeffrey A. Rosen and Heidi King who justified their proposal with a new analysis concluding that the stricter Obama-era pollution rules would lead to thousands of deaths in road accidents because more fuel-efficient cars are less safe because they are lighter.

Read the article at The New York Times.

MSN

In order to accelerate its self-driving car technology, Ford will be investing $4 billion in creating a subdivision called Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC, based in Ford’s Corktown Campus in Detroit.

“Ford has made tremendous progress across the self driving value chain – from technology development to business model innovation to user experience,” said Ford president and CEO Jim Hackett in a statement. “Now is the right time to consolidate our autonomous driving platform into one team to best position the business for the opportunities ahead.”

Read the article at MSN.