Our client Sport Chrysler Jeep Dodge is a small, but successful car dealership in Fort Bragg, California, a city of 6,000 on the Mendocino Coast. A few months back, the owners, three local families, asked Lewis & Summers to look at their promotion activities and suggest new ways to boost sales and service business.
We knew nothing about the auto industry, but quickly learned the basics from co-owner Mike Slaughter, a man with 30 years car sales experience.
We learned during our first meeting that the sale of used cars is an important part of dealership revenues. For years, Mike has been finding used cars — Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, Fords, etc. — across the country and delivering them to coast residents, but it still was a little known service locally. When you drive by the dealership, you see Chrysler and think they only sell and service Chrysler products. Not so.
Getting Online
Sport Chrysler at the same time was creating its first website. It occurred to us that Mike and his team are “hounds” out tracking down cars for people. We suggested he “brand” the service by getting the domain MikesAutoHound.Com and trademarking the service.
Within a month, Slaughter established a Mike’s AutoHound logo and website and was advertising the service: “When you’re looking for your dream car — new or used, any make, any model — why leave the Coast? We can find and bring it to you!” Ads have also appeared on Cox cable TV, the local movie theatre, in newspaper advertorial and on postcard mailers.
Results
Calls have poured in and the AutoHound staff is busier than ever with Mike’s national network expanding rapidly.
Lesson: fresh eyes can lead to fresh ideas.
What PR pros already know: branding a little known product or service can be a powerful marketing tool. A cute logo can’t hurt.
They say public relations can be hard to measure. Often that’s true. But with Mike’s AutoHound, the name and brand we created for an auto dealership in Northern California, measurement is reflected by profits directly attributed to the car finding service: while other dealers the same size as our client are losing an average of $10,000 a month, their dealership is profitable. The partners attributes it to Mike’s Auto Hound. And the business is growing rapidly.