TVR Gears Up For Overseas Challenge
With an expanding dealer network in the UK and a phenomenal customer and enthusiast base spanning Europe, Japan and the United States, British-owned sports car manufacturer, TVR Engineering Ltd, decided to upgrade its existing systems of communication to more effectively convey its eminence in the British automotive market.
Utilising an integrated brand asset management solution from Cintra Corporation, TVR implemented a two-phase project encompassing a new corporate web site and technical extranet. Consequently, TVR has radically enhanced marketing and technical communications throughout its dealer network whilst maintaining superior levels of performance and customer service.
The TVR Legacy
The origins of one of Britain’s largest independent sports car manufacturers can be traced back to 1947 and the craftsmanship of a young engineer from Blackpool, Lancashire. It was on the back of this fresh talent and energy that the first TVR chassis was designed and built two years later. By 1970, TVR had moved to its Blackpool factory in Bristol Avenue, where it has remained to this day.
Years of in house development and testing has enabled TVR to elevate its market profile to become virtually the only independent car manufacturer producing sports cars with TVR designed and built engines. Over the last few years in particular, three new engines and five new cars have emerged from the Blackpool factory. Every TVR is hand-built to a customer’s own specification and takes approximately 650 man hours to build over the course of a four week period. It is this bespoke quality that sets the TVR brand apart from the competition and has made the company renown for producing some of the fastest, most exciting sports cars in the world.
TVR has established an extensive UK dealer network, as well as sales channels in Europe and Japan, with plans to set sail across the Atlantic in the near future. The US is by no means unfamiliar territory to TVR; it was active there from 1956 until 1985 but had to pull out owing to its then modest size in a fiercely competitive industry. TVR’s new stature means that it is now fully geared up to penetrate this huge market opportunity. With all this demand, TVR’s corporate image has to be reflected consistently in its public-facing tools, literature and services, which until now has not been seen as a priority.
Meeting Customer Demand
In the fast-moving and highly competitive British automotive industry, leading players are under constant strain to maintain a consistent and powerful brand image to attract new customers and retain existing ones. This is a dilemma that TVR is all too familiar with.
When TVR realised that a good majority of its customers were internet savvy this spurred the company to embark on a concerted campaign to step up the use of the internet as a communications channel with its target audience. TVR kicked off this campaign with the launch of a new corporate web site designed and developed by specialist cross-media design agency, Room 58.
“The TVR web site had previously been brochureware sporting highly outmoded, static copy and visual images,” commented Joanna Bradshaw, director, Room 58. “Its lack of user friendliness also meant that the site was updated on a rather impromptu basis. The company recognised the necessity for a newly designed web site that would successfully convey its heightened stature and ensure the effective communication of the TVR brand.”
Coupled together with the regular email communication from some of its 10,000 registered enthusiasts, TVR also needed a solution that would enable effective communications by pushing the latest information such as corporate developments, motor racing events, exhibitions and press work via its web site.
Meeting Dealer Demand
Alongside the corporate web site, TVR recognised the need to develop a technical extranet for its dealer community to ensure consistent brand messaging across the network. TVR wanted its engineers to keep its dealers up to date with the latest technical specifications and marketing materials to ensure continuity throughout the different car showrooms.
“Electronic content has become more and more prevalent. We found ourselves in a situation where we were forced to accept the trends of today’s digital society and move with the flow,” commented Ben Samuelson at TVR. “This advancement into the Ôdigital age’ as it were, generated new issues surrounding the storage, communication, protection and distribution of our brand material such as logos, taglines, images, designs and creatives, and audio/visual promotional materials. Our dealerships in particular found themselves under increasing pressure to uphold the high levels customer service expected from TVR as there was no simple way of accessing information on the latest technical innovations or revisions to marketing collateral.”
Selection Criteria
Being very much an engineering-led company, TVR was hesitant to outsource the maintenance of the corporate web site and technical extranet to a third party unfamiliar with engineering terminology. Nor did the company want to employ a team of in-house web engineers. It wanted a technology solution that would be simple to deploy and easy for TVR staff to operate and maintain themselves without the requirement of proficient IT skills. TVR’s international ambitions meant that it also demanded a scalable solution capable of expanding with the future demands of the business. Not only would it allow for engineering staff to upload the latest news and stream audio/visual material materials on to the web site from Le Mans at two o’clock in the morning, but it would also have the potential for extending applications into all kinds of collaborative areas such as car inventories, online service manuals and training videos for service departments.
TVR turned to its internet design agency for assistance and advice on the most suitable solution. The agency was highly supportive of the company’s objectives and was able to propose Cintra’s MASmedia brand asset management (BAM) software.
“TVR was increasingly aware that its existing systems of communication needed to be improved to ensure a seamless and consistent brand message across its dealer network. We recommended that TVR consider implementation of a brand asset management strategy for rapid and cost-effective delivery of tailored marketing collateral and technical knowledge to dealers. Via a secure, web-enabled central repository TVR staff can update information in real-time for dealers to access and implement within their showrooms. In addition, via an HTML-based web site TVR staff can keep their customer and fan base up to date on the latest news from the company as they log on from their homes at any time of the day.”
Accelerating Into The Next Stage.
Although the project is in its early stages, TVR has already reaped significant benefits through the BAM installation. TVR is able to run a simultaneous Flash and HTML option on its tvr-eng.co.uk site to suit all web browsers and platforms. This is particularly convenient for the surprising number of TVR owners that come from a military aviation background who may not have the capability to download Flash onto their PC’s owing to the advanced firewall security settings installed in such sensitive environments. Feedback from customers at this stage suggests general delight that they can view the latest news from TVR at motor racing events such as Le Mans twenty-four hours a day.
From the extranet point of view, major benefits include the ability for TVR to communicate more effectively with its dealers and help them to provide a higher quality of customer service. TVR engineers are able to stream video footage of a TVR car to dealers at low cost. In addition, dealers have an enhanced level of personalisation as they can access a secure area separate from the customer web site, providing them with a Ôvirtual’ forum where they can discuss the latest fixes and engineering innovations.
In the future, TVR will further utilise the capabilities of the BAM solution to develop an online car-builder application which will enable customers to order bespoke cars viewing them in minute detail both internally and externally on the internet first. At present, potential TVR owners face a bewildering array of choices when ordering a car. As well as six different models, each often with different engine variants, there are more than 40,000 paint choices, including the remarkable colour changing Reflex and Chameleon ranges, as well as choices for the colour for wheels, leather, stitching, carpets, piping, headlining and hoods. Of course, the car-builder application will never replace the tactile, hands-on adventure of selecting the various specifications but it is all about improving customer relations, communications and elevating the TVR experience to another level. TVR is well on its way to achieving its goals.