Goodyear Dunlop Drives Forward

In the last 12 months Goodyear Dunlop UK has embarked on a multi-million pound TV advertising campaign, rejuvenated its Dunlop brand and made a number of key personnel changes. However, the most recent news is that Goodyear Dunlop is planning a “significant investment programme” for its Hi-Q retail network.

Managing director, Dick Johnson, revealed the news as part of a speech at the recent NTDA Tyre Wholesalers Group lunch, flying in the face of other speculation about the chain’s future.

“The Hi-Q network is an asset and the majority of stores will remain under Goodyear Dunlop ownership. We are going to invest in people, training, marketing and systems and develop a new franchise programme that will complement our company owned stores to create a strong nationwide network,” Dick Johnson explained. And the developments do not stop there.

“In truck, we have had great success across Europe with our TruckForce network. We are planning to replicate this in the UK by creating a dedicated UK network, which we will carefully separate from Hi-Q so we can truly focus on being the best service provider in both the car and truck fleet markets, rather than having branches that are ‘jacks of all trades,’” he continued.

An important step towards these developments was the appointment of Chris Kisby as new director of retail, UK.

The media manufacturer?

This year Goodyear Dunlop has invested heavily in its brands, with TV, magazine, newspaper and new media campaigns.

The most visible part of this strategy was Goodyear’s return to television with its high profile RunOnFlat television advertisement campaign. This was supported by high visibility campaigns in the trade and consumer press. The campaign had a clear goal, to raise the general public’s awareness of self-supporting tyre (SST) technology, leaving the implicit association with the Goodyear brand. Both the print and TV adverts played on this concept by featuring various ‘normal-looking’ models. This marketing policy was emphasised through Goodyear’s sponsorship of an unquestionably family orientated film, namely: Herbie – Fully Loaded.

While the Goodyear brand concentrated on proclaiming the benefits of its RunOnFlat to the widest possible audience, Dunlop headed for a different course.

The year started with Dunlop being awarded ‘best stand’ at Autosport International in January, setting the pace for what was sure to be a motorsport orientated brand direction. And of course this meant motorsport activities. The most high profile new addition came in the shape of a new three-year deal as title sponsors for the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championships screened on ITV.

Furthermore, the Dunlop part of the business produced Tread, a “lifestyle supplement” in the Sunday Independent. But it wasn’t all traditional media. During 2005 Dunlop launched Injection TV, a website portal with access to a library of motorsport clips, and announced that over 350,000 visitors had viewed its driversknow.co.uk website.

This year Dunlop Race Academy entered its second year with over 8,000 entrants. The winner finished 10th place in his first competitive race at Silverstone.

Product developments

The Goodyear Excellence high performance tyre was also launched. Then there was the new UltraGrip 7, which is designed to give more grip on snow, ice and slush aimed at family and high performance cars. However, the company’s major product focus was on its RunOnFlat technology with the European launch of Goodyear RunOnFlat taking place at 75th Geneva International Motorshow in February. As well as a high profile television advertisement campaign, an all-encompassing “through-the-line” campaign took place to promote RunOnFlat technology.

Back in January, Fulda made its debut at the Autosport International show. Here they launched the new ultra-high-performance tyre, the Exelero and sponsored the Live Action Arena. Since then the Fulda Attiro won Which? magazine’s tyre test and came ‘Recommended’ in the Auto Express 2005 tyre test coming fourth from 20 tyre brands tested. Fulda also partnered Maybach for Project Exelero restoring a 1938 Maybach that could conduct tests at over 200km/h. Again this resulted in what the company called “an extremely successful press campaign.”