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Marketing and advertising insights for automotive suppliers

How Many Tentacles Can One Automotive OEM Supplier Brand Have?

How Many Tentacles Can One Automotive OEM Supplier Brand Have?

The more ways you apply the essence of your brand, the stronger your brand will be (and the more it will help sell product).

Studies show that brand consistency across many channels is a significant factor in consumer spending.

Hear, hear and heck, yeah.

I’ll say it again: Brands which are consistent in their look and message get a bigger share of an average consumer’s wallet than brands that aren’t. There are so many places the brand essence of an automotive OEM supplier can go, including:

Prints ads
T-shirts
Napkins at the company holiday party
Bathroom signs
(Yes, bathroom signs.)


Smart, e
ffective brand managers never get tired of applying their brand in strange and wondrous ways, in places where you least suspect it.

There are almost an infinite number of ways your brand essence can be applied. Some of them cost nothing. They already exist. Is there any reason not to use them? I can’t think of any. Some more places your brand essence can appear are:

PowerPoint presentations
Sales call leave-behinds
Company press releases
The first five seconds and the last five seconds of your video blog posts
Coffee mugs
The company website
Shipping boxes (Nuts.com’s boxes are fun works of art)

You’ve got your logo. Your brand colors. Your brand typography. You’ve got your brand messaging and the tone of your brand voice. So take it and run with it as far and as wide as you can. Ok, more places:

Lapel pins
Trade show graphics
Email design
Facebook profile page
How you answer the phone
What your people wear on sales calls
Water bottle labels

We interrupt this blog post for a tasty bit of brand wisdom from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz:

Authentic brands don’t emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does.

Hear, hear and bottoms up, Howard.

Like most successes in life, a strong brand happens through good preparation plus specific, lucid guidelines and limitations. Brand rules aren’t meant to limit creative people but to liberate them. Instead of deciding what colors to use, what typefaces to use, what version of the logo to use (yes, some companies have several versions of their logo; I need a nap), you can spend your time figuring out where to and how to make your brand even stronger. And then apply it to:

Website
Pens
Pencils
Notepads
Mobile billboards driving around the perimeter of your most major trade show
Smartphone cases
The decoration on the birthday cakes you send clients

Did you know you can put your logo on a skillet?

Water vector created by Freepik

Brand Positioning

Ernie Perich

As the owner and creative director of Perich Advertising + Design for more than 30 years, Ernie knows a thing or two about automotive marketing. He combines brand strategy with smart creative to help automotive suppliers strike a nerve. Contact

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