Reinventing a Company's Brand for the New Economy

It was 2008 and the writing was on the wall: Kent Rylee’s 20-year business relationship with General Motors was about to change forever. He was faced with many options. Instead, he chose to reinvent his business. While other car dealers faced with the same dilemma were closing their doors, he took a long look at what they could do with the facility, employees, and reputation they had. What emerged was Kent Rylee Automotive Solutions, a local Napa Auto parts dealer with a full service center that sells used cars.

Join us as we talk with Kent Rylee and his marketing director Stephanie Orman as they share key steps they took in reinventing and rebranding the business. The name change was a minor detail. The major work was in operations and marketing of the company. With an experienced and highly skilled support and technical staff, Kent and his business partner Darrell Bone worked on streamlining the company, developing the auto parts business, and evolving the used car operation.

Gone were the co-op dollars that manufacturers and franchises provide to assist with advertising costs. And at the same time, how people shopped for used cars was changing. Stephanie had to look for guerrilla marketing techniques that would fit her reduced advertising budget and reach all the customers who shop for cars today on the internet.

You’ll learn the details of how they used focus groups to engage their existing customers and how the management team and the employees stepped up to re-launch this business.

This is Episode 9. It originally aired on June 18, 2012 on my old network. I'm re-broadcasting it to share my older episodes with my BlogTalkRadio listeners.