It seems that a few of my esteemed brand colleagues are a bit beyond fed up with lousy branding in the world of automobile dealerships. Here are the opinions of some of the Branding Wire Crew; Drew Mclellan, Martin Jelsema, Olivier Blanchard , Steve Woodruff, Valeria Maltoni, Becky Carroll, Patrick Schaber, Lewis Green … and now here’s my spin:
Let me preface my piece with a little bit about my background. In my former life, prior to starting my brand agency, I was employed at a national health and safety company that catered to (get this) automobile dealerships. Over the course of almost a decade I had visited and provided ongoing services to several hundred car dealers. I think I’ve seen or heard everything that can possibly happen in a dealership and some of the stories I have would curl your hair! Let’s just say there’s a reason for all those rumors and the stigma’s are not baseless. However, there are some really great companies out there who are trying to break out of the stereotypes and I commend them for their efforts. Sadly, they’re stuck in an industry with some horrific brand problems.
I’ll keep my comment(s) short with a suggestion for a field trip.
Try this; First go to a typical auto dealer franchise where price negotiation is part of the process and try to get a good deal on a vehicle. Any line will do … Ford, Chevy, Toyota, your choice. THEN go to a Saturn dealership. I’m not saying that Saturn is a better car or that they offer more value. For this exercise, these issues are irrelevant. The only comment I’m making is that they’ve removed the pain of barter-friction from their sales process. Ask anyone who has ever bought a Saturn and you’ll get a completely different view of their brand experience to any other franchise. This is a BIG DEAL! The most important and critical concept for creating great brand is knowing that you’re connecting with people. Miss that and you’re doomed.
Yes, there’s more to industry-wide bad branding than this one topic of price bartering …€” let’s not forget; bad advertising, hard selling, shady ethics, confrontational attitudes, poor creatives, and LOUDNESS… the list goes on and on.
A trip of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I look forward to a handful of dealerships (or whole franchises) that take Saturn’s lead and break out of the bad-dealership-brand mold.
Full disclosure: Until 18 months ago, when I bought a new GMC Envoy, my two previous cars were Saturns. My next car will also likely be a Saturn … yes, because of the experience in dealing with their courteous dealership staff during; the sales process, routine maintenance, roadside assistance, etc. You’ve just gotta love brand-based purchasing decisions!
Well, if you’ve been reading this for any period of time, you’ll know it’s not just a logo and a tagline.
Consider these other aspects:
Does your brand include these?
Creating a powerful advertisement is tough… really tough. One approach would be to keep the ad to a simple powerful title, a sentence of small descriptive text (just enough), and one reeeeallly powerful image that combines something unexpected with something a little shocking. Here’s one:
I’m a little late in finding this one from a few weeks ago, but the content is relevant. Boston.com reports on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Bean Town last month. Here’s a snippet from the article;
“If vendors have their way, a second wave of collaborative technologies …€” including wikis, blogs, videos, and mashups, platforms and features borrowed from social-networking sites like MySpace …€” soon will wash onto computers in the workplace.
Such interactive technologies are part of a larger trend known as Web 2.0 that has taken root in the consumer space. They have the potential to transform commerce, simplifying communications between employees, suppliers, and customers…”
What excites me is the seemingly endless depth of possibilities here. The act of globalization isn’t just a business phenomenon … it’s a social and societal transformation!
As a contrarian voice in the article, Thomas Davenport , a professor of information technology at Babson College in Wellesley states;
“I have no problem with organizations experimenting with Web 2.0 technology,” Davenport said. “But most of the benefits of these technologies are social rather than business-oriented. And even when businesses are using them, nobody’s saying anything about what kind of ROI (return on investment) they’ve been able to get on them.”
Are you friggin’ kidding me?! That’s like saying we shouldn’t utilize other common “social” business interactions like meetings or brainstorming sessions or teleconferences … Gosh, I’m not sure we should do those things because we can’t measure the ROI (sic)!
Good gravy, if business as a whole wasn’t “social” (rather than business oriented) it wouldn’t be as fun or profitable. It’s about people Mr. Davenport, not always about ROI. The old adage was “watch your pennies and the dollars will watch themselves.” I’d like to coin a new phrase; “Watch your people and your ROI will watch itself.”
