#How co-op works
A manufacturer accrues funds for a dealer, usually as a function of vehicles delivered, and reimburses a share of qualifying advertising spend against that accrual. The accrual expires on a schedule (monthly, quarterly or annually depending on the program) and unclaimed funds do not carry forward indefinitely.
What qualifies is defined by the program, and every manufacturer's program is different. Typical requirements cover which media are eligible, which vendors are approved to produce or place the advertising, how the brand and logos must appear, what disclaimer text must be present, how long the brand must be visible or audible in video and radio, and what documentation must accompany the claim.
The reimbursement share also varies, and it is common for different media to reimburse at different rates. That is worth knowing before planning, because it changes the effective cost of channels relative to each other in a way that no media plan built without it will reflect.
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The accrual expires on a schedule, which is why timing matters as much as eligibility.
#Why claims fail
Almost never eligibility. The store is enrolled, the funds are accrued, the media is a qualifying type.
Every one of those is decided at the point the creative is produced, and every one is cheap to satisfy if the requirements are in front of the person producing it. They are expensive to fix afterwards because the ad has already run.
The structural cause is a split of responsibility. The agency produces the creative and knows the campaign. The controller or the co-op administrator files the claim and knows the requirements. Neither sees the other's limits at the moment that matters, which is the brief.
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Almost never on eligibility. They fail on details.
#The brief is where co-op is won
The fix is procedural and it is not complicated: put the program's creative requirements into the creative brief template alongside the legal disclosure requirements, and treat them the same way: as limits the concept is designed around instead of as a checklist applied at the end.
That means the brief states the required logo treatment, the required disclaimer text verbatim, the minimum brand exposure, the approved production and placement vendors, and the submission deadline for that flight. It also means somebody checks the ad against the brief before it runs instead of before it is claimed.
Stores that do this find their claim success rate changes without anything else changing, and they usually also find they were producing creative through a vendor that was never approved, which is the single most expensive discovery to make after the fact.
TABLE
What belongs in a co-op-aware creative brief
Every item here is decided at the brief and is expensive or impossible to fix after the ad has run. Get the current requirements from your program portal each flight, because they change.
| Brief item | Why it belongs at the start | If it is missed |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-approval sign-off | Some programs require the creative approved before the campaign runs, not just documented after | The claim is rejected regardless of how well the ad performed |
| Approved production vendor | Some programs reimburse only work produced by listed vendors | The whole flight is non-claimable, regardless of the creative |
| Approved placement or media vendor | Placement is often restricted separately from production | Media spend does not qualify even where creative does |
| Logo treatment and size | Determines layout, not decoration | A partial claim or a rejection on an ad that already ran |
| Required disclaimer text, verbatim | It has to fit legibly at the size the ad will run | Rejection, or an unreadable ad with the type crushed at the bottom |
| Minimum brand exposure duration | Video and radio have to be timed for it from the edit | Re-edit after the flight, if it is even possible |
| Co-branding and tagline placement | Affects the concept, not the finish | Rejection on an otherwise compliant ad |
| Submission window and required documentation | Invoices, tear sheets and proofs have to be collected as you go | The funds expire: the most common single cause |
| Reimbursement rate by media type | Changes which channels are cheapest | A media plan built on the wrong relative costs |
Specific requirements, rates and deadlines differ by manufacturer and change; take the current version from your program portal.
#Co-op changes what your media plan should look like
Because reimbursement rates commonly differ by media type, the effective cost of channels relative to one another is not what the rate card says. A channel reimbursed at a higher share can be materially cheaper in real terms than one that looks cheaper on paper, and a media plan built without that information is optimizing the wrong number.
This is one of the few automotive-specific things about dealership media planning, and it is a reasonable test of whether an agency knows the category. An agency that has never asked about your co-op program is planning your budget without one of its main inputs. Check the source.
It is also why the dealership advertising budget should be built with co-op in it instead of treating reimbursement as a rebate that arrives later. The rebate changes the decision, so it belongs in the decision.
#The parts nobody wants to own
Documentation is the ordinary half. Invoices, tear sheets, screenshots, broadcast affidavits and proofs of performance have to be collected while the campaign runs, because assembling them two months later is how deadlines get missed.
Somebody has to own the calendar of submission windows, and it should be somebody who will still be there next quarter. In practice this works best when it sits with whoever owns the vendor relationships instead of with the controller, because the documentation comes from the vendors.
And somebody should reconcile what was claimed against what was accrued, at least quarterly. Stores that do this occasionally find they have been leaving a consistent share behind for years for a single repeatable reason, which is a much better problem to have than an unexplained one.
FIGURE
Collect it while the campaign runs. Assembling it two months later is how claims die.