Ford Retail has undergone a national rebrand, urging customers to ‘TrustFord’. Jessica McGreal reports
Buying a car is probably the second biggest purchase you’re likely to make in your lifetime and it’s essential you trust the dealership and automotive company you’re buying from. Trust is even more vital when purchasing a fleet of branded vehicles that your business will rely on to be successful. Ford Retail’s rebrand asks its customers to do just that: ‘TrustFord’.
This campaign comes after two years of internal work around the company’s proposition to the market. This included an extensive research project that revealed the emotional journey around buying and servicing a vehicle: going from a high-interest purchase at the point of buying a new vehicle, to almost a distress purchase when servicing.
As a result, TrustFord’s rebrand wanted to address the mistrust associated with dealerships and the car manufacturing industry, says Celia Pronto, TrustFord’s CMO. She continues: “People almost feel they have to do a tonne of research before they walk in the door so they know the questions to ask. For a lot of people this is a big purchase, and they don’t make it very often so they are outside their comfort zone. We wanted to tackle that preconceived notion of dealing with a dealership and really harness the fact we have invested in people and have a culture of transparency and honesty.”
Inside out
This marketing initiative wasn’t just about transforming the Ford Retail badge, in order to create one unified brand that customers can trust, the company remodelled its traditional franchised dealership structure. This meant overcoming a variety of challenges, including creating a central marketing team, central strategy and budget. This involved taking responsibilities and budgets away from 65 local dealerships and centralising them.
Centralisation hasn’t been met with resistance but was a big education task. Pronto explains: “The challenges have been around what [the rebrand] means in reality so when you centralise all the budget that means if you are a general manager at a site who would do some local activity that you really loved doing before – whether it worked or not – you wouldn’t be doing it anymore. No one got militant about it, but it was certainly about helping them understand why this was a better way.”
Working with Good agency, TrustFord involved its employees by featuring a sales executive, general manager and technician in reportage style photographs in the advertisements. This ensured staff were educated about the rebrand while highlighting the brand’s key USP: its people.
Strategy
The marketing team also went through a process of completely changing its go-to-market strategy, which was historically very traditional with no focus on digital communications.
Moving away from traditional media, TrustFord’s efforts have a new focus on behaviour-targeted marketing, PR and partnerships in order to stand out. This activity, which will run for six weeks, is very much about broad brand awareness, with a big focus on radio, outdoor advertising and local press. The brand hopes this will drive home the message it has changed names.
Meanwhile, it will specifically address its under-marketed-to SME audience by working with local start-ups and SMEs who are rebranding by offering them livery for their vehicle free of charge. Pronto adds: “We are very conscious, although this is a national rebrand, it is still a very local business and that we operate in local communities and are conscious of the responsibilities we have to support those.”
Driving demand
Despite having no results from the brand campaign yet, the marketing team has seen some fantastic results from its new strategy. In 2013 marketing drove just over 31 per cent more leads into the business, based on a cost-neutral budget. The team has already created 27 per cent more leads than this time last year.
The automotive company understands it needs to sustain the message around the rebrand after this campaign in order for prospects to take notice. It believes it may take two to five years to complete the rebrand and expect people to talk about the old brand for some time to come.
