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One of Dinans main marketing advantages in comparison to its contemporaries is having its presence condoned at the BMW dealerships. While this is a significant boon to business when executed the personnel at the dealership that could pitch and are aware of the product line change frequently. At best this turnover creates gaps of time where new personnel are being trained on the product line and customers are not being properly serviced. At worst, the loss of this key employee eradicates all knowledge of the Dinan product line and the dealerships sales of Dinan products falls to nearly zero. In order to eliminate or at least minimize both of these damaging scenarios and to keep an ever vigilant presence at the dealerships a solution was required. What was ultimately decided upon was a fixture in the showroom or the service drive that would be present to advertise and give information on all things Dinan in an attractive and eye-catching format. In order to accomplish this a multitude of factors needed to be considered; ease of assembly, universality among a myriad of different display requirements, cost effectiveness, and most importantly the message/format itself.
Upon visitation to many locations it was learned that BMW had required each dealership to purchase glass displays that were now being phased out. They were simply being retired to a storage facility and being unused. Immediately the cost effectiveness problem was solved since all the dealers already had the framework for a freestanding display that was just waiting to be used. We just had to design around it.
With the base structure realized the message and format needed to be resolved before we could go much further. Seeing as how Dinan essentially has 4 main categories of products; software, intake, exhaust, and suspension, it seemed pretty obvious that there should be something representing each of those 4 categories. The most effective way to do so in an eye catching way would be to mount physical representative pieces to the glass wall. This served a few functions. Instead of just artwork or something flat, three dimensional products invoke curiosity and the desire to interact. Additionally, the build quality of the Dinan product line is illustrated first hand. Lastly, it gives the end user something tangible right away they can see and feel instead of just some mystery car part a salesperson is pitching as the next great producer of power for your vehicle. The immediate visualization of the product in front of you on your dream car can be realized just because it’s physically in front of the buyer invoking that emotion.
With the parts now on the display some signage was needed to signify this as a Dinan display and not just another BMW fixture within the dealership so a header graphic was developed and mounted on stretch canvas and mounted on an aluminum frame to complement the glass display. A brochure holder based on a pre-existing BMW display part was also included so promotional material would be easily attainable. In order to fill up some of the additional blank space we also created informational plaques that mimicked something you would see in an art gallery for each of the four categories represented. All together these items combined to create the major elements of the Dinan Dealer Display.
The next issue was that some stores only used these glass displays as single sided pieces, others as 2 sided pieces and then there were a select few who simply just didn’t have the room for another free standing display and needed a different wall solution all together. To keep the comparatively low to the product side of the display a backing stretch canvas mounted on an aluminum frame was adhered to the other side of the glass display. It quickly and effectively solved the 2 sided dilemma as well as gave the dealership another ‘art’ piece. This backing artwork could also be mounted directly to a wall for those that just wanted to use the display as a single sided version and in general could be a stand alone Dinan ad anywhere in the building. For those dealers that were not using the glass displays an ingenious adapter kit was created that would transform the existing mounted pieces and their knob/hole mounting system over to a slat or wire mesh wall system. This way all parts were still universal but a few of the special circumstance cases would simply get some additional adapters in order to properly mount everything.
The adoption and success in the early stages of this program were so apparent that it has become a building block for any new dealership and is required to sign up to become a Dinan dealer. The success of the dealerships made the need for something similar for the independent shops a necessity. Unfortunately, cost was the biggest concern there so a simple cardboard totem (see picture at left) was implemented as they could be mass produced for a very attractive price point and could fit into any shop or showroom.
Client | Dinan Corp
Category | Branding, Photography
Year Created | 2014
Media | Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign