BRIDGESTONE TYRES
Digital Creative Strategy
Bridgestone Tyres New Zealand faced the challenge of enhancing its brand's premium image while also catering to budget-conscious customers.
This challenge was further compounded for Tony's Tyres, which needed a strategy to increase sales beyond its already well-utilised mobile tire van service and low-cost Warrant of Fitness offerings.
To address these issues and align the approach with the sales funnel, I developed a comprehensive strategy and creative solutions..
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Bridgestone's Existing Ad Strategy
Bridgestone aimed to reduce the frequency of its sales promotions to quarterly, requiring a strategy to balance a more premium brand image with continued, relevant market presence.
Proposed Ad Strategy
My creative strategy proposed categorising Bridgestone's tires into premium, mid-range, and budget tiers, each distinguished by a unique color system. To reinforce the premium brand image, I recommended a tiered discount structure, offering smaller discounts on premium and mid-range tires to maintain exclusivity.
Premium Buyers
Mid-Range Buyers
Budget Buyers
Digital Sales Funnel
I also developed ad messaging specific to each tire tier, designed to align with the corresponding stage of a digital sales funnel. Working closely with Artezan Digital, my media partners, I tailored this messaging for optimal impact at each funnel stage.
Top Funnel
Cold audience: New to the brand.
Middle Funnel
Warm audience: Awareness of the brand but no purchase intent.
Bottom Funnel
Hot audience: Know the brand & active in the market for tyres.
Retention
Warm audience: Existing customers who have not made a purchase in 1.5 years.
Topical Seasonal Ad Creative
Working with Artezan Digital we proposed introducing more seasonal digital advertising, responsive to immediate changes in weather or time of year.
Interactive Display Ad With Store Finder CTA
Additional Brand Layer Concepts
I also proposed the Bridgestone adopt an additional brand positioning strategy as 'the most knowledgeable, expert and helpful tyre brand', ensuring that a customer always get's the right tyre for them.
Tyre Selection Based On Your Driving Style Data
Selecting a tyre isn't just about price and longevity. Your individual driving style should also factor.
I proposed extracting customers' driving style from their car's computer to determine exactly which tyres are best for them for a hyper-personalised service. This would include information such as acceleration, braking and average speed data.
This could also be tied in with a phone app to utilise accelerometer data for even more information, such as aggressive or relaxed cornering and driving style overall.
In-Ad Tyre Finder
For time-poor customers, I created an interactive display ad which continued the theme of hyper-personalised tyre selection.
'Always-On' Brand Concepts
One of the difficulties for brands whose customers have infrequent buying behaviour, is how to stay connected in between purchases.
I developed additional concepts to address this issue.
Collect Rewards For Safer Driving
Bridgestone only offered rewards to commercial and fleet customers who were more frequent buyers.
I devised an app concept to reward the public for safer driving with points towards their next set of tyres. The more a driver stayed within the speed limit, cornered sensibly and didn't brake or change lanes erratically, the more points they'd earn.
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This would also help position Bridgestone as the brand who prioritises safety.
Free Winter & Summer Tyre Swap & Storage Service
Dedicated winter tyres are safer than driving on all-year-round tyres, especially in New Zealand’s wet winters.
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I proposed creating a free tyre swap scheme where customers could drop into a dedicated Bridgestone to service centre to have their tyres swapped over to match the season. Bridgestone would store their second set of tyres.
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This would also ensure that customers remained connected and within the Bridgestone brand ecosystem whilst outside of the purchasing cycle.
Tyres As A Subscription Service
A new set of tyres can be a big expense which comes all at once. I proposed introducing tyres as a subscription service where customers can pay monthly in advance for their next set of tyres.
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​This would help ease the cost of new tyres whilst keeping customers connected to the brand. We would also offer additional services such as balancing, alignment, rotations and extra insurance cover as subscriptions.
Tyre Brand Concepts
There's a great tradition of high concept advertising for tyre brands as well as with Bridgestone.
I developed concepts initially for social media which focus and dramatise the features of two of Bridgestone's premium tyres.
Tony's Tyres
The scope of work also encompassed Bridgestone's budget brand Tony's Tyres.
Top Funnel
Middle Funnel
Bottom Funnel​
Retention
Bundles
To increase spend outside of individual purchases for tyre changes, Warrant of Fitnesses or servicing, I proposed creating bundles, offering discounts on the service the customer may also need now or in the near future.
Tony's van mechanics-drivers should be one of the most persuasive ways of promoting the bundles to customers. I proposed that they should be trained and armed with the required knowledge and collateral to promote this new offering.
As well as basic messaging, the bundles ads should also contain a seasonal theme.