A brand solution to drive a multi-dealer car site to market

At Prestige Park, some of Melbourne’s most respected luxury car dealers have joined forces to provide a huge range of pre-approved, used prestige vehicles.

Establishing Prestige Park and its brand has been a collaborative effort. We spoke to Barry Williams, Director of Penfold Motors, and one of the five dealers involved in Prestige Park, to discover how the brand has journeyed so far.

DDG: What was the early impetus for Prestige Park?

BW: My colleague, Alan, had the site at Doncaster and felt that it was ideal for a multi-dealer set-up – the demographics and profile of the area looked right for this type of business. We initiated the concept and gradually brought on board the other four brands - Audi Centre Doncaster, Lexus of Blackburn, Silver Star Mercedes Benz and Silverstone Jaguar/Volvo - along with our own Penfold Prestige.

Our concept was to offer a broad range of factory-approved pre-owned vehicles in one convenient location and to enhance the buying experience by providing an on-site café.

DDG: How did you market the business in the beginning?

BW: Initially our marketing efforts were disjointed, especially as the dealers came on board one-by-one. We struggled with marketing the interrelated brands in such a way that they didn’t lose their individual identities. Each of the brands came with its own set of graphic standards for how its logo could be represented, and especially how it could be communicated jointly with other brands. We had to be very careful about how we delivered any advertising.

Early in 2008, we (the five stakeholders in Prestige Park) met as a group. Together, we recognised the need to be consistent and uniform about our marketing messages. Penfold Motors had recently re-branded, meeting similar challenges of multi-brand marketing by adopting a strong master proposition to carry the other brands to market.

The group decided that Prestige Park needed something similar – something that was visually and conceptually strong, and could carry off all the brands together, without losing the potency of the individuals.

DDG: What was you next move?

BW: In May, we (the group) met with the DDG team (who had been managing the Penfold brand) and asked them to develop a brand solution for Prestige Park. The cornerstone was identifying the overarching messages that would attract prospective customers, irregardless of what make of car they were seeking.

DDG created the positioning line “Where drivers dare to dream” which summed up the proposition and became the glue to hold the whole campaign together. With that line and some clever text we were able to express the multiple brands under a cohesive banner. It was not difficult to get consensus from the whole group for this approach, given that it answered the brief so well.

DDG: How did you apply the concept?

BW: DDG suggested we retain the typography and some of the style of the original Prestige Park logo, but then created a strong, complementing visual treatment to carry it off.

The challenge was in finding ways to use the various individual brand logos side-by-side and still meet the strict graphic standards requirements of the brand-owners.

We have always felt radio to be a good medium for advertising in our industry. Again, there were problems with advertising all the brands together, so we developed four separate radio advertisements – one for each of the brands – all finishing with the tag “where drivers dare to dream” and directing listeners to visit the website.

DDG: How is the concept applied to the website?

BW: The comprehensive new Prestige Park website replaces a single-page site that really wasn’t doing the business any justice at all. The home page has a sleek design that combines professional photography with the positioning statement and a brief overview of the business.

The navigation menu takes visitors directly to the specific sub-brand they are interested in, allows them to book a service, locate us on GoogleMaps or contact us directly. A search facility is linked to carsales.com.au, but only returns results for cars at the Prestige Park location. This means the individual dealers can load up their specific vehicle data to carsales.com.au, and it is automatically reflected on the Prestige Park website.

DDG: The website has been live since early July … how does the group feel about the results?

BW: We are delighted with the whole process. The DDG team turned around the creative drafts, nailed the concepts and delivered the website within extremely tight timeframes. The whole campaign needed to be pulled together within one month to allow time for the technical build on the website and the production of the radio advertisements.

We are operating in a fast-changing business climate so it is difficult to see results reflected directly in sales figures this early. What we do know is that in each of the months of August and September, we had about 2,000 unique visitors to the website, even though we have so far only rolled out limited marketing to support it. Best of all, we have a powerful, cohesive brand and proposition to which we can anchor our on-going marketing efforts.

“We are very pleased with the whole process from the branding aspect and the way in which DDG assisted us to assimilate four brands under one Prestige Park master-brand, giving it a clear visual expression and enough separation to allow each of the individual brands its own personality.

The speed with which DDG presented draft creative and then nailed the concepts was extraordinary. As was their delivery of the final brand communications and website.
In the current fast-changing climate of the car industry we have been delighted with the consistency and continuity of the Prestige Park brand.”
Barry Williams, Director Penfold Motors

Visit Prestige Park's website at http://www.prestigepark.com.au