Neil Burrows (44) has been appointed to the newly-created role of Marketing Director for Goodyear Dunlop UK. He joins the company from Nissan Europe,
where he was responsible for advertising and brand management across Europe. Before this he was Marketing Director of Nissan (GB).
Pirelli has picked up a prestigious advertising award in the USA for its “Fist” campaign, where four tyres are shown merging into a fist. The accolade is a gold “ADDY” award for international consumer press advertising and was given at the recent American Advertising Federation (AAF) awards presentation. With 60,000 entries, the competition claims to be the world’s largest and this year was opened up to international entries for the first time.
Ford, last week, reached a settlement with Tennessee Attorney general and 52 other jurisdictions regarding alleged deceptive trade practices relating to the sales of Ford SUVs. The Attorneys alleged that Ford failed to disclose a known safety risk concerning tyre failures with certain Firestone ATX and Wilderness AT tyres which came equipped on some Ford SUVs. The State also alleged that Ford’s advertising misled consumers as to the safe use of Ford SUVs. Other allegations included certain aftermarket tyres sold through Ford’s “Around the Wheel” program were the same tyres as the tyres that came equipped on Ford SUVs when that was not true. Ford denied all such allegations. However, they have agreed to settle nonetheless.
Under the slogan “This is Your Road To Success”, tyre producer Fulda invited 150 of its retailing partners to Berlin for a dealers’ conference. The audience heard a clear confession towards the tyre-retailing companies and a towards a marketing strategy which will in the future be mainly oriented on qualitative items. Sales trainer Joachim Bullermann added some sarcastic pieces of advice concerning the right methods of managing your personal shop. In times during which market growth is slow and is reduced to just a few segments (UHP, Off-Road) according to Bernd Joachim Hoffmann, CEO of Fulda, the two aspects of “brand values” and “customer loyalty/trust” fulfil an important function of distinguishing the brand from the competition. Today brands symbolise more than ever “light house” qualities in an ocean of products that are perceived as becoming increasingly similar. The value of a brand is determined by different qualitative and quantitative factors: product quality, brand trust/sympathy, brand identities, brand awareness, market share, pricing behaviour of the brand distribution quality and sales presence, the advertising and marketing spending, earnings and EBIT of the company, sales efficiency, organisation of international distribution and the age of the brand. Concerning this aspect Hoffmann could point to a positive summary for the Fulda brand, saying: “We are already doing things today, while others are just starting to think of tomorrow.”
Kwik-Fit GB has resumed its press advertising campaign, offering four tyres from 60 Pounds (two for 35 Pounds), excluding valve and balance. For certain H-rated sizes, four tyres are available for 100 Pounds. Over the Easter week, a record number of customers visited the group’s centres and 21 centres recorded their best-ever week for sales.
The advertising campaign for Pirelli “TM600” standard series tyres, launched in July 2000, has been rewarded by the French “Grand Prix de la Publicité de la Presse Agricole”, for the mechanization sector. The prize is given every year by a jury of experts to the advertising campaign that makes use of the press media in the most creative and effective way. Developed with the international ageny Ogilvy & Mather of Milan, the campaign has been translated into seven languages.
At a press conference, Formula one boss Bernie Ecclestone confirmed that Moscow will host a Formula One Grand Prix event, probably in 2003. A new circuit is being built on a site south of the city, at an estimated cost of 112.7 m Euro. No new race will be added to the F1 calendar, so Moscow will replace an existing event. Both Italy and Germany currently stage two races, so one of these is favourite to be dropped, although a possible ban on tobacco advertising at the race in Belgium may make that event unattractive to sponsors, and thus vulnerable.
The management of Bridgestone/Firestone USA has made it very clear that it will do everything in its power to revitalise the Firestone brand and losses in market share will not be accepted without a fight. It is expected that the company will embark on one of the biggest advertising and marketing campaigns in the group’s history.
The tyre tests appear normally twice a year in spring and in autumn. Millions of people at least notice them, and among these many even study them very intensively. The topic discussed here is the tyre tests which appear regularly every year in the big end consumer-oriented automotive magazines in Germany. Their judgement has a significant impact on the consumers. The tyre manufacturers know this for a fact and promote positive test results in their advertising campaigns. A note as “very recommendable”, for example, serves as a kind of award, which has a strong convincing effect in the tyre retail shop. However, if the product fails in all important magazines the result will be the opposite and the whole thing can end in disaster. Tyre manufacturers fear these situations, specially when they have introduced a new product to the market. Tyre retailers use positive test results often as an additional argument in a sales discussion with the customer. There is just one small problem: the exact influence of tyre tests on sales in the retail shops – in the sense of knowing the precise percentage of customers who buy a special tyre just because of the test result – is very difficult to measure. But there are some qualitative characteristics of tests that can be found out without problems: Tyre tests have a different relevance and coverage. The effect of tyre tests on customers is of a limited time – especially in the winter-season. The sell-in of the retailer is just as influenced indirectly (backwards) by tyre tests. Experiences from the previous tests play a role. The influence of winter tyre-tests is regarded as much higher than those of summer tyre tests by retailers and customers. Tyre tests have an effect on a certain segment of customers: people who are already concerned about the problem of safety.
The National Tyre Distributors Association has announced that, following the success of last year’s inaugural TyreCheck Safety campaign, the association has joined forces with road safety lobby group BRAKE for this year’s event. TyreCheck 2001 will run alongside the BRAKE Road Safety Week (31st March to 6th April) and is open to all UK tyre retailers. The 2000 TyreCheck found that 10 per cent of tyres examined were below the 1.6mm legal minimum tread depth.
In order to expand its approach to marketing Michelin North America is reviewing its US advertising policy and will be evaluating new agencies after a 17 year relationship with New York agency DBB. At the same time Goodyear are set to increase world-wide advertising spend by 30 per cent. The annual advertising spend for Goodyear is estimated to be $60m.
Eric Bequin, Manager of Advertising at Goodyear Luxembourg, will become the new Director of Advertising, Europe, from the 1st of May. He succeeds Rainer Keinath, who is leaving the company voluntarily.
American photographer Annie Leibovitz was inspired by classic Rubens and Botticelli pictures when creating the Pirelli Calendar 2000, which was recently presented in London. Leibowitz was also involved in Pirelli’s 1994 advertising compaign showing Carl Lewis in red high heels.
American trends, schemes that have proved successful on the other side of the big pond, will spill over to Europe after a short delay. That has always been so. So watch out for the letters FCSD and remember that they stand for Ford Customer Service Division. The car giant has just started a strong advertising campaign in North America, introducing to the public “America’s Newest Tire Store”, a network of 2,400 of the current 5,000 Ford and Lincoln Mercury dealers. According to a Ford spokesman, this is the latest step in providing customers with everything they really need, and all at one stop. The Ford and Lincoln dealers, he claimed, have suitable business premises, sufficient relevant expertise and the scope to offer competitive prices – with the express advance warning that Ford has no intention to be cheap but will market tyres “at a fair price”. Tyre manufacturers build tyres to Ford specifications, the spokesman explained, and it would therefore only be a natural progression for the company to market “original replacement parts”. Thus only original equipment suppliers will be able to take part in the Ford replacement business. To give the project a kick-start the company currently runs a lavish and expensive TV campaign (costs are not disclosed), later to be supported and partly replaced by radio advertising and direct mailing. Carl Bergmann, Customer Service Operations Manager, can see no point in sending customers away in future when they want to buy tyres. And these are certainly not empty words: In July 1998 the Ford organisation sold a mere 700 tyres, the figure for this July was 97,000, and that is only a start. The sales target for the current year is one million tyres, three million in the year 2000, to be doubled again to six million units in 2001, at least according to a Ford Motor Co. spokesman talking to the press. These are large numbers indeed, but not unrealistically so, because if each of the currently participating 2,400 dealers only sells one set of tyres per day, the three-million barrier will be breached.
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