Case Study: Motorola

Educate over 5,000 luxury automotive dealership sales personnel on mobile phones and their integration with the vehicle – and get them to enjoy it!

“Julie worked on this team for three years leading the marketing efforts for our luxury automotive customers, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Jaguar. We attribute the significant success of our marketing programs and our overall relationship with these customers to her ability to bring a unique combination of both her personality and marketing skills to the business every single day.”

Ray Sokola, Corporate Vice President and CTO, Motorola Home and Mobility Networks; formerly the Vice President and General Manager, Motorola Integrated Automotive Communications Solutions.

Motorola Automotive (now owned by Continental Automotive Systems) supports three major product lines focusing on electronics parts including Chassis & Safety, Powertrain Division and the Interior Division which includes telematics solutions (such as OnStar) for interior communications and safety features.

Go-To-Market Execution Challenge
Motorola had just recently launched what was at the time known as “the world’s smallest cell phone”; the Motorola StarTAC. Shortly thereafter, the Motorola Automotive division was preparing to launch the same phone with their three luxury automotive customers, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Jaguar. In the automotive environment, the phone integrated with the vehicle’s audio system and steering wheel controls to provide a hands-free communication experience in the vehicle.

The challenge was three-fold with the dealership personnel: 1) educating them on the phone itself along with the integration of it within the vehicle; 2) providing training to dealership personnel on cell phone carriers, networks and how to get consumer phones activated; and 3) delivering compelling information in “layman’s terms” that they would understand and be able to articulate back to the end consumer – the vehicle owners.

The Sherpa Impact
Sherpa Marketing worked in conjunction with Motorola, as well as with the automotive manufacturers to design, develop and launch a nationwide rollout program to the dealership personnel. This resulted in the development and distribution of over 3,000 marketing launch kits nationwide that included the following materials:

• Welcome and information letter
• StarTAC and Automotive dealer informational brochure
• Detail cell phone carrier information guide
• Instructional information on how to activate or transfer phone service
• Poster for use in the dealership offices for consumer awareness
• A product launch t-shirt gift for each recipient
• A StarTAC calculator gift for each recipient

With one of the luxury manufacturers, these materials were followed up with a 3-month, 8-city training program, whereby 2,000+ dealership personnel received face-to-face training on the product, along with demonstrations and promotional giveaways.  Sherpa Marketing designed, developed and delivered this training as well.

Results
The campaign launch was an overwhelming success! It generated a tremendous amount of industry buzz, as well as dealership excitement. Motorola garnered an incredible amount of customer confidence and loyalty to their company due to the effort and deliverables put forward to launch this product. Additionally, this was an industry first and was reflected as such in the public relations buzz gained around it. The program was so successful that both BMW and Mercedes-Benz included the product as standard equipment on their highest end vehicles (750iL and S-Class respectively). Anytime an automotive manufacturer makes an aftermarket solution “standard” on a vehicle it is a significant “win” to the supplier, in this case Motorola.

BMW StarTAC Launch Kit