Where's the Beef?

Come with me on a ride. Let’s head out early one Sunday morning for a trip down I-95 from Dillon, South Carolina to Orlando, Florida. That should be about nine hours or so of driving. It’s going to be a long day on the road, but we will make a few rest stops and break for an hour or so for lunch.

I-95 has pretty good signage (except in Connecticut, but that’s another story) and at every exit it tells us what food, gas and lodging is available.

It’s 1:15 in the afternoon and now we are hungry. We could go for some really good All-American hamburgers for lunch. So we start reading exit signs. One exit near Jacksonville has Taco Bell, a McDonalds, a Pizza Hut and a Joe’s Beef and Burgers. Great, we think, two choices of hamburgers.

So which should we choose? We know McDonald’s; heck, we see them advertised every day. We don’t know anything about Joe’s but the word “burger” is in his name. Is Joe’s a really good local place or one of those just-get-a-sign-on-95-and-it-doesn’t-matter-how-the-food-tastes place? Would Joe’s be a great burger experience (and we fancy ourselves connoisseurs of great burgers) or a salmonella shack?

We hem and haw, but we really just don’t know, so we end up choosing McDonald’s. The food may not be great, but it’s never really bad and we know that the staff there is trained and retrained on sanitation and safety. So in we go and each have a burger and fries that could be defined as, well, adequate. In fact the whole experience is just satisfactory. Joe’s may have been great, but we’ll never know. We chose mediocrity over the potential for greatness because we knew what we’d be getting and it wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be bad.

I’ve used a hamburger analogy before, but it’s never been more timely than now as Safelite has just hired a new executive who comes from … you guessed … the hamburger business (CLICK HERE for related story). Matthew Johnson is the company’s new media director and he comes from Wendy’s International. He also has worked for Lenscrafters and a number of companies with a strong national presence. Couple this with Safelite’s announcement last week it is going to use a number of its employees in upcoming advertising and you can see where this is going.

I’d expect to see a series of commercials, both print and radio, in the company’s associates’ words about how much they care, how important quality is and how calling Safelite is like calling the neighbor down the block. I’d expect these advertisements to be the rollout effort in building a national brand.

So are those who compete against Safelite doomed? Hardly. A number of Safelite’s senior executives have been quoted saying how difficult it is for the company to compete against local companies that have a strong brand and presence in that location.

Let’s go back to our I-95 journey again. Suppose that I’ve stayed in Jacksonville before and seen “Joe’s Beef and Burger” in local advertising and sponsoring community activity. Suppose I hear them on the radio as I pass through. Suppose I have a friend who lives in Jacksonville who has eaten at Joe’s for years and mentions the restaurant to me. Do you suppose I’d try Joe’s then? Of course, I would.

So the goal for companies that compete with Safelite is to create a pond that you can dominate. This is easier for a small company than a regional player. Choose a market size that you can dominate, and then get to work doing just that. Even if it’s a small part of just one town, make it yours. Create an experience for the customer that is so superior to what a national chain can provide that you will build loyalty that lasts for generations. Right now, I’d be preparing some advertising talking about how locally grown my company is, how much I care about safety and what a superior installation job I can provide. I’d explain carefully that my company is not a big conglomerate or chain, nor is it really a British or South African one. If I was AGRSS-registered, I’d mention that. “I’m your hometown, homegrown auto safety guy,” I’d be telling potential customers.

And, whether I’m selling burgers or windshields, they’d be great, safe All-American ones.Pass the ketchup.