Learn From Car Brands

Ask the next person you talk to: if you were a tough man, what car would you look at? Something really tough, rock solid? Then ask: which car tells everyone you know what the best cars are? And which one is the most exotic sports car? I have asked those questions in seminars for years. Almost everyone answers the first ones the same way, and the answers to the later ones scatter. Why? Because each car brand has spent decades planting one idea in your head, and some of those ideas are shared by nearly everyone while others depend on who you are. That is what branding does.

One brand, one idea

Say Volvo and the word that comes back is safety. Say Toyota and they think reliability, a car that runs forever. Say BMW and they think driving, the machine itself. Mercedes says prestige and engineering. Jeep says go anywhere. Subaru says all-wheel drive, dogs and the outdoors. Ferrari says speed and exclusivity, and it makes very sure you cannot buy one easily.

Notice what none of them say. None of them say “quality, service and value.” None of them say “we do it all.” Each one picked a single idea and then spent every dollar, every design decision and every advertisement proving it. Volvo does not run ads about how fast its cars are. Ferrari does not talk about resale value. They know that owning one idea in your head is worth more than renting six.

Here is the distinction for your business. A description tells people what you do. A position tells people what to think of you. Every plumber in your town does plumbing. Only one of them can be the one who shows up when they say they will, or the one who explains everything in plain English, or the one for old houses. The car brands chose. Most small businesses never do.

Image sets the price and the customer

The book makes a point I want you to hold onto: branding and image can determine everything from what you can charge to who your clients are going to be. The car industry proves it in public every day. Two vehicles with similar size, similar horsepower and similar parts can sit tens of thousands of dollars apart because one badge means something the other does not. Nobody is being fooled. They are paying for the idea, and the idea is real to them.

The car makers also understand something about perception that the book explains: it is close to impossible to appeal to everyone with one image. So one company will make products under more than one name simply to target more people and speak to their different perceptions. Toyota built Lexus so the reliability idea could wear a luxury suit without confusing the original brand. Honda did the same with Acura. Volkswagen owns Audi, Porsche and several others, each with its own idea and its own customer.

You cannot afford to run three brands. But you can do the small-business version, which is choosing one idea and one avatar and letting the marketing material carry it, rather than trying to be every car on the lot.

What a car brand does that you can do

It chooses one thing to be known for and says no to the rest. Pick yours from your internal brand and your avatar’s pain points, not from a list of nice words. What does Mary, the bank accountant from our avatar guide, worry about most when hiring a contractor? Trust. Being able to leave you alone in her house. That is a position. “Quality work at fair prices” is not.

It repeats the idea everywhere, for years. Volvo has been safety for longer than most of your customers have been alive. Your idea needs to be in the name or the tagline, on the truck, in the way the phone is answered, in what your crew does when the customer is not looking. One idea, every touchpoint, no exceptions.

It designs the whole experience to match. Sit in a Mercedes and then sit in a Jeep. Every surface, sound and switch tells you which idea you are inside. Your version is the estimate form, the shirt, the invoice, the follow-up call. Do they all feel like the same idea?

And it accepts that the idea will repel some people. Ferrari is happy that most people will never own one. If you try to be for everybody, nobody feels the promise, and the car companies know it.

This week

Write down the one idea you want to own in your customer’s head, in five words or fewer. List your five most visible touchpoints and mark whether each one proves that idea, ignores it or contradicts it, and fix one contradiction this week. Then ask three customers what one word comes to mind when they think of your business, and compare it to the word you chose.

Choosing the idea takes an hour or two and is free. Owning it is the long part, measured in years of consistency rather than weeks of design. None of the car brands got there quickly, and none of them got there by changing the idea every season.