A recent weekend of car shopping got Adam Glaiser-Creed (Account Director at LoveGunn) thinking.
Before leading major accounts at LoveGunn, including automotive, Adam spent almost twenty years in retail - from supermarkets to global fashion flagships. That experience shaped how he sees brand, service and the details that make or break a customer experience.
In this piece, he looks at the car-buying journey through a retailer’s eyes, as well as through the eyes of a creative agency, and asks why so many dealerships still overlook the basics that great retail mastered years ago...
I recently visited a few of my local car dealerships with my wife, and something hit me - why are some dealerships overlooking the basics of retail? We’re in the very early stages of scouting out the market for a new car. My wife drives what I would call our ‘workhorse’ car - you know the one - the car that is filled with life’s important things - wellies, a sock, empty water bottles, uneaten sweets that have melted into the door compartment and my son's scooter that was last ridden in summer of 2019. Some might argue that my role as the Dad would be to wash the cars on a Sunday morning (which I don’t do) so I can’t really complain about the cleanliness, inside or out. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t contributed to the unkemptness too - with the size of the Kadjar, it really is fantastic for loading up to the brim for tip runs.
Nonetheless, new car new me, right? With the kids growing up (wish me luck - teenage years are fast approaching) we’re on the look out for something that feels a little more grown up. Car seats and buggies are now long gone, and we move more into ferrying my daughter and her friends around for shopping trips and sleepovers, and my son to football practice and local park runs. An SUV for sure, and more than likely an EV or PHEV.
As I remember my parents doing, most research, testing and purchasing would happen on a Saturday morning. Saturday mornings were meant for ‘avin a look about, so with the kids in tow, we ventured off out to do the rounds of our local main dealers.
I grew up in retail. Starting at the age of 16 collecting trollies in my local supermarket whilst completing my studies. The young, naive, cocky lad who was more interested in who’s party we were going to at the weekend, and chatting up the girl on the fresh foods department than actually doing work. Something must have changed as I was given the small responsibility of managing the queues at the checkouts and restocking the carrier bags at the ends of the tills. Almost twenty years later, in the blink of an eye, I was still in retail - but had navigated promotions all the way up to in store Senior Management in the largest supermarkets in my county, and then bounced over to lifestyle fashion retail, running one of the biggest stores on the planet. I must have done something right I guess.
I could talk all day about the value of retail leadership and the countless transferable skills it engrains into us. I could be poetic and compare how an artist views the world is similar to how I see things… in car dealerships or my local Tesco express, but let's be honest - I don’t quite have the writing skills to compare so eloquently.
So how the hell does all of the story telling relate to my dealership experience? In retail, detail is everything - from spotless floors to perfect displays. In automotive, some dealerships get it right, but some don’t even see the opportunity.
Entering one dealership there was an assault course to navigate, squeezing through a tight pathway to get to the customer parking spaces to only find the three dedicated spaces were taken (one by a test drive vehicle). The forecourt was brimming with cars, so much so that some had been parked on the grass just off the forecourt - which at this time of year was more mud than grass. Cigarette butts littered the front step of the entrance and we entered the showroom already slightly flustered. I can’t fault the service of the salespeople - not that we demanded much time of theirs at all considering we were ‘just looking’. The basics were there, delivered well from the salesperson in their slightly battered smart shoes and suit they’ve worn every day this week. The more we looked round, the more I started to hone in and my retail is detail alarm started dinging. The showrooms themselves were unloved - cobwebs in the corners of the ceilings, black marks on the floor, notices sellotaped to the walls and generally quite tired looking. The cars we sat in themselves in the showroom had either been very busy that morning, or hadn’t been given a once over in a few days. Paper mats in the footwells were crumpled in half, dirty and in reality a bit pointless. Finger marks, dust and a tissue on the inside of one in particular, a handful of vehicles missing information, pricing or brand plates.
Taking a bit of a step back and reviewing the site from a wider lens - the showroom also felt cold. Very little messaging, signage, POS or brand story. This is a main dealer - so I would have expected a little theatre or at least, some brand in action pieces.
So, the golden question - why is this even important?
Working at a branding agency in London, of course we are going to say that brand is everything. Brand is everything you do, all of the time. It is what people say about your business when you’re not in the room. Brand is built through multiple touch points - it’s not just a logo or a fancy coffee machine in a showroom. Brand is about the feeling you create from the moment you step out of your car onto the forecourt and into the dealership.
Our Saturday morning trip out was an opportunity to be introduced to some automotive brands, and to further understand others. Having worked in the automotive space, I’m a little more clued up on the top 10 brands than my wife - so she was experiencing this from a true customer point of view. What did we see? We saw a tale of two cities - some dealerships truly understanding that brand matters, detail matters and service drives sales. On the other hand, a blinkered approach that is missing a trick with detail.
Do cobwebs really impact a decision when thinking of purchasing a car? Would a slightly manky customer toilet put me off spending tens of thousands on a nearly new car? Possibly, possibly not. It would instil doubt in my mind though. If the dealership manager is cutting corners when it comes to cleaning and presentation of the showroom - are they cutting corners in the workshop? Has that car that has been fully serviced and had safety checks completed really been given the full treatment, or have they done 90% of the to-do list? I’m not sure, and would likely say they have - but that's how consumer behaviour works. Customers often complain that in supermarkets ‘things are always being moved around,’ even when changes are rare. Perception is everything. Dealerships aren’t just selling cars, they’re selling trust. It’s my job as a parent to feel that the thing I’m buying will keep my family safe.
Harping back to my retail days (told you I could talk about it all day), cleanliness and presentation was critical. Not only for food hygiene reasons, but every opportunity to make things right for the customer was approached with a customer first mindset. Clean floors? Yes. Neat, tidy and fully stocked shelves? Absolutely. Roll cages tucked nicely out of the way? Yep. Every possible thing in our power being done to make the customers life easy? You bet. Competition was fierce - you give one poor shopping experience to a customer and you risk losing them for life. Adding to this that a customer would go and tell 5 people about a poor experience, but only 2 about a positive experience - we had to work real hard for every customer. This was before the rise of the Aldis and Lidls - when supermarkets were price sensitive, but leaned more into food quality and customer service.
If I were running a dealership today, I’d challenge my team to think like retailers. Walk the showroom like a customer - would you buy from yourself? Unlike supermarkets or flagship clothing retail stores, the need to do this hourly is overkill - a daily walkthrough would be more than sufficient. Order in some pizza, get some music on, and have the team (and managers!) spend an hour deep cleaning the showrooms after closing time as an opportunity to reset. It would make the world of difference, I promise.
The best brands - the ones that win - understand that every single touchpoint matters.
Automotive could learn a lot from retail. The question is: which dealerships will take that lesson first?
Want to hear more, or if any of the above resonates - chat to us at adam@lovegunn.co
A recent weekend of car shopping got Adam Glaiser-Creed (Account Director at LoveGunn) thinking.
Before leading major accounts at LoveGunn, including automotive, Adam spent almost twenty years in retail - from supermarkets to global fashion flagships. That experience shaped how he sees brand, service and the details that make or break a customer experience.
In this piece, he looks at the car-buying journey through a retailer’s eyes, as well as through the eyes of a creative agency, and asks why so many dealerships still overlook the basics that great retail mastered years ago...
I recently visited a few of my local car dealerships with my wife, and something hit me - why are some dealerships overlooking the basics of retail? We’re in the very early stages of scouting out the market for a new car. My wife drives what I would call our ‘workhorse’ car - you know the one - the car that is filled with life’s important things - wellies, a sock, empty water bottles, uneaten sweets that have melted into the door compartment and my son's scooter that was last ridden in summer of 2019. Some might argue that my role as the Dad would be to wash the cars on a Sunday morning (which I don’t do) so I can’t really complain about the cleanliness, inside or out. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t contributed to the unkemptness too - with the size of the Kadjar, it really is fantastic for loading up to the brim for tip runs.
Nonetheless, new car new me, right? With the kids growing up (wish me luck - teenage years are fast approaching) we’re on the look out for something that feels a little more grown up. Car seats and buggies are now long gone, and we move more into ferrying my daughter and her friends around for shopping trips and sleepovers, and my son to football practice and local park runs. An SUV for sure, and more than likely an EV or PHEV.
As I remember my parents doing, most research, testing and purchasing would happen on a Saturday morning. Saturday mornings were meant for ‘avin a look about, so with the kids in tow, we ventured off out to do the rounds of our local main dealers.
I grew up in retail. Starting at the age of 16 collecting trollies in my local supermarket whilst completing my studies. The young, naive, cocky lad who was more interested in who’s party we were going to at the weekend, and chatting up the girl on the fresh foods department than actually doing work. Something must have changed as I was given the small responsibility of managing the queues at the checkouts and restocking the carrier bags at the ends of the tills. Almost twenty years later, in the blink of an eye, I was still in retail - but had navigated promotions all the way up to in store Senior Management in the largest supermarkets in my county, and then bounced over to lifestyle fashion retail, running one of the biggest stores on the planet. I must have done something right I guess.
I could talk all day about the value of retail leadership and the countless transferable skills it engrains into us. I could be poetic and compare how an artist views the world is similar to how I see things… in car dealerships or my local Tesco express, but let's be honest - I don’t quite have the writing skills to compare so eloquently.
So how the hell does all of the story telling relate to my dealership experience? In retail, detail is everything - from spotless floors to perfect displays. In automotive, some dealerships get it right, but some don’t even see the opportunity.
Entering one dealership there was an assault course to navigate, squeezing through a tight pathway to get to the customer parking spaces to only find the three dedicated spaces were taken (one by a test drive vehicle). The forecourt was brimming with cars, so much so that some had been parked on the grass just off the forecourt - which at this time of year was more mud than grass. Cigarette butts littered the front step of the entrance and we entered the showroom already slightly flustered. I can’t fault the service of the salespeople - not that we demanded much time of theirs at all considering we were ‘just looking’. The basics were there, delivered well from the salesperson in their slightly battered smart shoes and suit they’ve worn every day this week. The more we looked round, the more I started to hone in and my retail is detail alarm started dinging. The showrooms themselves were unloved - cobwebs in the corners of the ceilings, black marks on the floor, notices sellotaped to the walls and generally quite tired looking. The cars we sat in themselves in the showroom had either been very busy that morning, or hadn’t been given a once over in a few days. Paper mats in the footwells were crumpled in half, dirty and in reality a bit pointless. Finger marks, dust and a tissue on the inside of one in particular, a handful of vehicles missing information, pricing or brand plates.
Taking a bit of a step back and reviewing the site from a wider lens - the showroom also felt cold. Very little messaging, signage, POS or brand story. This is a main dealer - so I would have expected a little theatre or at least, some brand in action pieces.
So, the golden question - why is this even important?
Working at a branding agency in London, of course we are going to say that brand is everything. Brand is everything you do, all of the time. It is what people say about your business when you’re not in the room. Brand is built through multiple touch points - it’s not just a logo or a fancy coffee machine in a showroom. Brand is about the feeling you create from the moment you step out of your car onto the forecourt and into the dealership.
Our Saturday morning trip out was an opportunity to be introduced to some automotive brands, and to further understand others. Having worked in the automotive space, I’m a little more clued up on the top 10 brands than my wife - so she was experiencing this from a true customer point of view. What did we see? We saw a tale of two cities - some dealerships truly understanding that brand matters, detail matters and service drives sales. On the other hand, a blinkered approach that is missing a trick with detail.
Do cobwebs really impact a decision when thinking of purchasing a car? Would a slightly manky customer toilet put me off spending tens of thousands on a nearly new car? Possibly, possibly not. It would instil doubt in my mind though. If the dealership manager is cutting corners when it comes to cleaning and presentation of the showroom - are they cutting corners in the workshop? Has that car that has been fully serviced and had safety checks completed really been given the full treatment, or have they done 90% of the to-do list? I’m not sure, and would likely say they have - but that's how consumer behaviour works. Customers often complain that in supermarkets ‘things are always being moved around,’ even when changes are rare. Perception is everything. Dealerships aren’t just selling cars, they’re selling trust. It’s my job as a parent to feel that the thing I’m buying will keep my family safe.
Harping back to my retail days (told you I could talk about it all day), cleanliness and presentation was critical. Not only for food hygiene reasons, but every opportunity to make things right for the customer was approached with a customer first mindset. Clean floors? Yes. Neat, tidy and fully stocked shelves? Absolutely. Roll cages tucked nicely out of the way? Yep. Every possible thing in our power being done to make the customers life easy? You bet. Competition was fierce - you give one poor shopping experience to a customer and you risk losing them for life. Adding to this that a customer would go and tell 5 people about a poor experience, but only 2 about a positive experience - we had to work real hard for every customer. This was before the rise of the Aldis and Lidls - when supermarkets were price sensitive, but leaned more into food quality and customer service.
If I were running a dealership today, I’d challenge my team to think like retailers. Walk the showroom like a customer - would you buy from yourself? Unlike supermarkets or flagship clothing retail stores, the need to do this hourly is overkill - a daily walkthrough would be more than sufficient. Order in some pizza, get some music on, and have the team (and managers!) spend an hour deep cleaning the showrooms after closing time as an opportunity to reset. It would make the world of difference, I promise.
The best brands - the ones that win - understand that every single touchpoint matters.
Automotive could learn a lot from retail. The question is: which dealerships will take that lesson first?
Want to hear more, or if any of the above resonates - chat to us at adam@lovegunn.co
