While brand mar­keters for con­sumer com­pa­nies exploit the new web-created oppor­tu­ni­ties to catch buy­ers’ atten­tion, B2B mar­keters have had good rea­son to wait. The gen­eral con­sen­sus is that dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing com­prises cor­po­rate web­site and repet­i­tive cor­po­rate mes­sag­ing placed in ban­ner adver­tis­ing and in social media posts, tweets and pho­tos.

By Ed Pierce, ItsTheArtsFleetMarketing.com

As a mar­ket­ing man­ager for a provider of fleet prod­ucts or ser­vices, you know that the first ques­tion an exec­u­tive will ask is “Where’s the value?” Are you really going to explain mar­ket­ing value based on Face­book “likes,” Twit­ter “fol­lows,” and Pin­ter­est “pins”? Not likely! It’s hard enough explain­ing the value of tra­di­tional adver­tis­ing mea­sures like cost-per-thousand, impres­sions, aware­ness and perceptions.

Okay, so why will dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing become an inte­gral part of every fleet provider’s inte­grated mar­ket­ing strat­egy?

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When we asked Cor­po­rate Reim­burse­ment founder and exec­u­tive chair­man Gregg Dar­ish to give us some insight into the com­pany, he explained that the com­pany has evolved from its early focus on vehi­cle reim­burse­ment and is renam­ing and rebrand­ing the com­pany later this year to “Motus” – Latin for Motion.

“Now, our focus is pri­mar­ily on our clients’ mobile employ­ees and ensur­ing our clients have access to tech­nolo­gies, ser­vices and solu­tions that will equip those mobile employ­ees with the best solu­tions to con­duct their jobs in the most pro­duc­tive man­ner,” he explained.

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In a recent, wide-ranging dis­cus­sion with Claude Mas­ters, CAFM, NAFA Pres­i­dent and Man­ager of Vehi­cle Acqui­si­tion and Fuel at Florida Power and Light, we asked him to give us his thoughts on the chang­ing role of fleet man­agers and why a fleet’s image is so impor­tant.

Claude: I really think that the fleet man­agers of the future might look quite a bit dif­fer­ent from the way they look today. What I am see­ing is that more and more fleet man­agers are being asked to inter­act with com­pany exec­u­tives because of the pro­file of their vehi­cles and fleets in the indus­try today. Ten years ago, in most cases, top exec­u­tives didn’t pay much atten­tion to their fleet of vehi­cles other than they were a tool to get a job done.

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GPS track­ing solu­tions give you access to such a large amount of fleet data, it can be entic­ing to set up too many real-time alerts in the attempt to obtain as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble. Although you have access to an abun­dance of data, it is not nec­es­sary to view it all in real-time. You may be ask­ing your­self, “What’s nec­es­sary to know in real-time and what isn’t?” The answer is that you should only be receiv­ing alerts for excep­tions that occur that require imme­di­ate cor­rec­tion or action. GPS Insight allows you to cus­tomize very spe­cific alerts to be sent, and when they are sent, so that you only receive impor­tant and time-sensitive infor­ma­tion via alerts.

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Sta­tis­tics sug­gest some areas of the U.S. inher­ently breed more cau­tious dri­vers, while oth­ers tend to spawn some of the most accident-prone motor-vehicle oper­a­tors on the road.

If auto safety is your num­ber one vehic­u­lar pri­or­ity, move to Ft. Collins, CO, which boasts the safest dri­vers in the nation accord­ing to the annual America’s Best Driver’s Report con­ducted by All­state Insur­ance Co.

READ MORE to find out the 10 best and the 10 worst.

Hav­ing your car repaired after an acci­dent is never fun, but some of the pain can be alle­vi­ated by an effi­cient garage offer­ing speedy ser­vice. Believe it or not, such places do exist, and new data from Enter­prise shows where to find them.

Enterprise’s data comes from its Auto­mated Rental Man­age­ment Sys­tem (ARMS). That’s a soft­ware solu­tion designed by Enter­prise to facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion between garages, cus­tomers, insur­ance com­pa­nies, and Enter­prise, “enabling shops to send elec­tronic rental reser­va­tions, vehi­cle sta­tus updates and auto­mated text or email cus­tomer notifications”.

READ MORE to find out how each state fares.

The Net­work of Employ­ers for Traf­fic Safety (NETS) is call­ing on lead­ers of com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions to adopt ele­ments of road safety for all employees—not just busi­ness dri­vers— as a core com­po­nent of the organization’s safety cul­ture. NETS has launched a free com­pre­hen­sive online tool kit to help ini­ti­ate or strengthen employee safety pro­grams by includ­ing road safety.

The 2014 Drive Safely Work Week (DSWW) tool kit, themed “Dri­ving your safety cul­ture home,” builds the case for exec­u­tive lead­er­ship to adopt safe dri­ving as a part of the cor­po­rate safety cul­ture and pro­vides low-cost steps to engage employ­ees with a start­ing point focused on seat belts and mobile device use while driving.

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With leas­ing con­tin­u­ing to gain momen­tum, CNW Research com­pared the con­tract resid­ual value pro­jec­tion with the likely actual value at the end of term.

CNW firm ana­lysts found that last month’s indus­try aver­age set­tled at 85.88 per­cent — a fig­ure rep­re­sent­ing the dif­fer­ence between the actual con­tract and the even­tual actual sale price. That aver­age has been on a steady rise since the begin­ning of the year when CNW pegged it at 84.65 per­cent back in January.

Of the six automak­ers included in the lat­est report, three brands had their level come in above the aver­age mark, and three other badges set­tle below it.

READ MORE about the findings

Last year, when hack­ers Char­lie Miller and Chris Valasek showed they could hijack the steer­ing and brakes of a Ford Escape and a Toy­ota Prius with noth­ing but lap­tops con­nected to the cars, they raised two ques­tions: Could hack­ers per­form the same tricks wire­lessly, or even over the Inter­net? And even more press­ing: Is your spe­cific car vul­ner­a­ble, too?

If you own a Cadil­lac Escalade, a Jeep Chero­kee or an Infiniti Q50, you may not like the answer. READ MORE, and check out the chart of hack­able cars.

Navdy, a San Francisco-based startup, announced a break­through Head-Up Dis­play (HUD) after­mar­ket car con­sole that allows dri­vers to access their smartphone’s apps while keep­ing their eyes on the road.

Dri­vers are three times more likely to get into an acci­dent when they take their eyes off the road to look down at a touch­screen. Built-in con­soles like Android Auto and Apple Carplay are just big­ger touch­screens that do noth­ing to solve the problem.

“Smart­phones were never designed to be used while dri­ving.” said Navdy co-founder and CEO Doug Simp­son. “Touch-based apps clearly force you to take your eyes off the road. So we started by com­pletely rethink­ing what the expe­ri­ence of using apps behind the wheel should feel like. Navdy is built from the ground up to be the safest and most intu­itive way to make calls, use nav­i­ga­tion, lis­ten to music or access noti­fi­ca­tions with­out ever look­ing away from the road.”

READ MORE to learn about Navdy’s offerings