The challenge
Navigating towards a more sustainable automotive industry, Møller Mobility Group is expanding their business model, including automotive care, in addition to buying and selling cars.
As a part of this vision, they acquired LaserWash: a well-functioning, local chain of brushless car washes. While having an excellent product, the car wash company lacked a solid brand and a coherent customer offering. Before being able to grow into a national market leader, Møller needed help building the brand and market strategy, and upgrading the user experience.
Branding by learning
As an agency that does business building rather than solely branding, we viewed this challenge as an opportunity to do more than simply build a brand from scratch. We extended the concept of branding to include not only the look and feel of the car wash itself, but also a business model, a healthy omnichannel user experience, a name, and a value proposition that could lift the product as a whole.
In our experience, this can only be done by first understanding the market, the users, and the product we are working with. We needed to learn about the car wash segment. How do people talk about it? If they use it: why? And if they don’t: why not?
Using our tried-and-true method of bottom-up branding, we started gathering insight through service safari, surveys, interviews and market analysis. We learned, amongst other things, that most people don’t really use car washes. They wash their cars manually, using a sponge and a hose. We also learned that most of the car wash businesses we studied had put hardly any thought at all into designing and optimizing the user experience.
Having this insight, we started looking at how we could expand the customer base, by offering a service that is more convenient, cheaper, smoother and more sustainable than manual car wash. We also looked at how we could optimize the user experience, making it easier for both the customer and the service staff to use and run the car washes.
After testing different concepts and value propositions through Facebook ads, we found solid evidence on the insight we gathered. This helped us decide how to move forward with the project, and made it possible to create a thorough brief to Heydays, who helped us with the visual design and identity.
Preparing for a scale-up
The result is a brand-new way of looking at automotive care, and a consistent brand of car washes equipped for a national scale-up. Over the following months, we will be working on the next step in the project, preparing the launch. This means working out the finishing touches on the physical locations, as well as optimizing the digital experience, making it smoother for the end user, as well as making day-to-day operations easier for the administration.
With a team that is now holding a tested and validated value proposition, a differentiating brand and common unity around a good understanding of their users, the project has built a solid foundation for scaling this local business into a national market leading chain.