Building a Respectable Dealership Brand

Progressive dealerships are reminded constantly of the importance of building and maintaining their brands. Your advertising agency may recommend a catchy slogan, maybe a jingle for the radio. Your digital marketing company may advocate a clean logo and a fresh color scheme. Your business consultant may suggest a mission statement or guiding principles. While all of these pieces of advice are great, not a single one of them will help you in the short term. What you need is time.

Annually, several different organizations offer their selections of the strongest brands in the world. No matter the sample size, the questions asked, or the secret sauce used for calculations, the same brands almost always bubble to the top.

Take for instance, CoreBrand’s Brand Respect study that leveraged data compiled over the past two decades. Before a company can even be considered respectable, it must be publicly traded…for a minimum of five years, be a corporate brand (not a sub-brand or division) and it must be indexed for a minimum of five years. The Mashable featured, in-it-for-the-IPO companies need not apply.

Not surprisingly, CoreBrand ranked Coca-Cola the most respectable brand. Coke sits at #3 according to Interbrand (where it had a long reign as #1) and Forbes has it at #3. From the color red, to the white script logo, to its globally recognized flavor, Coke is a model of consistency. Even its bottle has its own shape (which has become an adjective in its own right) so that it is tactilely recognizable for those whose vision is challenged. The sun does not set on Coca-Cola. It is also a 128-year-old company.

For the most respectable and recognized brands, it has been a long road. General Electric was founded 122 years ago. Pepsi was founded a year later. IBM has been changing the game for 103 years. Apple, while maintaining a youthful charm, is nearly 40 years old. All of these companies have faced market upheavals, changing tastes, and economic calamities. They also share an unflappable commitment to dominate their market segment.

We realize you’re not Coke. Bill Cosby is not your spokesman. You didn’t teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. You don’t have a $4 BILLION marketing budget (not an exaggeration). There is a lot that can learned from Coke (along with the other megabrands) in terms of how to build a brand that will last for the ages. Let’s touch on four things that the most respected brands do well.

First, and foremost, your store needs to be customer-centric. In the same way Coke tastes the same everywhere, and that every piece of Apple hardware looks like it was created by a jeweler, every single transaction at your store has to be emotionally positive. Weak links in sales, service, and administration, cannot be tolerated…even the superstars. Any complaints or negative reviews need to be addressed immediately, with the customer clearly winning. You need to create warm fuzzies that last generations.

Second, be meticulous about how your store presents itself. Granted, the manufacturers are getting more and more strict about the corporate facades, but that doesn’t mean your hands are completely tied. Many dealerships fall comically short in the logo department. Again, we understand you can’t hire Paul Rand (the same chap who Steve Jobs went to for NeXT, and penned the iconic logos for IBM, UPS, ABC, among many others) to design your logo. You can, however, work with a graphic artist to design something timeless. Treat it like an investment. No color or font should be left unturned. Remember: It should be something you WANT to wear on your clothes and see in media every single day.

Next, you must be committed to the long haul. Despite your OEM changing its mind every 30 days (or minutes), your store must remain steadfast in doing business to support the brand. You must be willing to heartily defend the positive attributes of your brand to anyone, from disgruntled customers to OEM district managers, throughout economic ups and downs. The reputation that you maintain today must continue for several generations.

Finally, you must be willing to financially support your brand. The most respected brands spend a significant percentage of revenue (like Coke’s $4 billion) every single year to maintain top-of-mind awareness. This means creating campaigns that can be supported on TV, print, radio, Internet, and social media. Despite the dominant positions these brands maintain, they never rest on their laurels.

Building a strong brand doesn’t happen accidentally. As some of the strongest brands have shown us, it takes long-term vision. A commitment to quality and consistent customer experiences is a foundational element and is core to the success of the strongest brands. Creating lasting brand imagery is crucial to growing and maintaining brand awareness. Spreading that awareness across traditional and emerging advertising channels are just part of doing business. If you can do these things the same way, every day, you’ll be on your way to creating a respectable brand.