Dealership branding
Making customer service part of your brand A logo is only half the battle. The author combines his training skills with the teachings from his favorite business book to help you sell more tires and service
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t would be a gross exaggeration to say I’m an avid reader of anything outside the sports pages on the Web. For me to pick up a book and read it from cover to cover says a lot about the book, not to mention my interest on the subject. Normally, I have little interest or time for books that promote business and marketing, or selfhelp books that have the proven By Kevin Rohlwing solutions to make me better at everything. Which means any business book that I have read more than once is a huge deal in my world. About 10 years ago, I started taking an interest in branding and came across an excerpt in an airline magazine on the subject. It left me wanting more, so I wrote down the title and author and started looking for it at my local bookstores. I found it a short time later and couldn’t put it down once I started reading. Since then, I’ve bought copies to give to new employees. When most people think of a brand, the image of a logo, name or symbol immediately comes to mind. You don’t need to see the silver letters “GM” on a field of blue to know what company it represents, nor do you need to explain the meaning of five interlocking, multi-colored circles with three on the top and two on the bottom. And while marketing experts spend millions of dollars creating brand identities that are easily recognizable by consumers, recognition is only half the battle. This book goes beyond the old brand thinking of logos and tag lines to create a new definition that encompasses more than what you see and hear. It taps into the feelings that are created by those identifiers so executives and managers can focus on the core values that matter to consumers. The name of the book is “A New Brand World” by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell. Bedbury was the Nike marketing executive who guided the “Just Do It” campaign that catapulted the company from the number three athletic shoe manufacturer to the largest footwear and apparel company in the world. He also managed the marketing efforts for Starbucks in the late 1990s when the
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company expanded from the Seattle area to thousands of stores across the globe. In his book, Bedbury chronicles his experience with both companies and uses it to teach valuable lessons regarding the evolution of the new brand world: “A brand is the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the off-strategy. It is defined by your best product as well as your worst. ...It is defined by the accomplishments of your best employee — the shining star in the company who can do no wrong — as well as by the mishaps of the worst hire you ever made. It is also defined by your receptionist and the music your customers are subjected to when placed on hold... The brand is defined by derisory consumer comments overheard in the hallway or in a chat room on the Internet. Brands are sponges for content, for images, for fleeting feelings. They become psychological concepts held in the minds of the public, where they may stay forever. As such, you can’t entirely control a brand. At best you can only guide and influence it.” While the impact of “Just Do It” on the growth of Nike is impressive, I believe Bedbury’s discussion on Starbucks is the most relatable to the tire industry. Tires, like coffee, are more or less commodities in the eyes of many consumers, so the success of Starbucks is all that more amazing when you consider the coffee market just 10 years ago. What’s even more impressive is the fact that Starbucks does not run commercials or print ads as part of its marketing. Old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising continues to be successful, in part because Bedbury helped Starbucks crack their brand’s genetic code: “Cracking your brand’s genetic code is not strictly about product, about the past, or even about things — it is about tapping into an essence and an ethos that defines who you are to the folks who matter: your core customers, your potential customers, and your employees.” Let’s start with the core customers because they are the ones who matter the most. For Starbucks, the members of this group will travel miles out of their way with total disregard for time and fuel economy to get a cup of coffee. They’ll use words like “consistency” and “quality” when rationalizing the extra effort it often takes to find a loca-
MTD November 2011 10/14/11 10:43:39 AM