If there’s a one-word aim of Quality Collision Group’s recent marketing, it’d be that first word: quality. There’s more happening — MSO branding, or the acquisition pipeline; and bringing business to their 90-plus body shops in a dozen states.
Long-term and ongoing goals are part of the story as it’s told. But the first is talking-up quality.
“Our biggest hurdle is customer education,” said Troy Hall, chief marketing officer with QCG. Showing them “the difference between our shops and everyone else, repairing cars the correct way, the OE way.”
The ads broach QCG’s ideas on what quality is and is like — and shoddiness, too. There’s more with branding and acquisitions and likely there’ll be some business from it, but quality is the big word.
Two, to be precise: Quality-Approved.com, a landing page tied to the recent push linking to a slot on QCG’s website.
“This messaging is the thinking behind the doing,” Hall said, “and we feel like no one has taken this approach before.”
Fine Dining, and What’s Not on the Menu
The star of the spots was video showing a customer greeted upon entering a body shop, handing over their keys, and then the magic happens. Behind the door — imagine your server disappearing into a world-class kitchen with your table’s order — staffers in chef’s whites and toques noires wielding welders and sprayers. It comes in 15-, 30- and 60-second lengths.
The unreasonable opposing viewpoint — call them cautionary tales — in the overall program are the series of stills — “print” ads, for you OG body folk — both static and animated, depicting vehicles repaired with a different animal each time. It’s a menagerie of mistakes, featuring a duck, a slug, a fish and some bees, with others that wrap the grill in a hamburger bun or smother it in oozy chocolate cake. Body copy sports dad-joke-level puns.
The quality ads aimed to evoke the Michelin star system usually used in rating the finest restaurants: one for “very good,” two for “worth a detour,” three for “special journey,” according to the Michelin Guide. Interestingly and ironically, the restaurant guide began more than a century ago as a freebie from the tire sellers to encourage travel. QCG reunited the two.
The shoddy side wants to get us with the stark-snark visual and the pun. You wouldn’t install webbed, palmate duck feet in place of tires or slimy slugs as new wiper blades, right? And as much as burger buns and a volcano cake appeal, it’s only as food, not as a collision center’s replacement parts.
Strictly, some of the ads speak to mechanical, not collision repair. But it’s a joke, get it? A visual. A pun. Point taken. As to quality, we know enough to decide what goes on behind that door.
Meantime a curious convergence: the marketing effort dropped in June on the same day as the latest season of “The Bear” on Hulu, tracking the trials and triumphs of a fine dining restaurant in Chicago.
“Internally, I nicknamed our commercial ‘The Bear’ spot,” Hall told Autobody News. “It’s a cool coincidence.”
What is an MSO Doing with a Branding Effort?
Both ads are highly visual.
“The kitchen approach is more difficult to display without movement,” Hall said. While aftermarket parts that “don’t fit” can be sharp, quick, funny: “Display ads are more to show what you wouldn’t do with your vehicle.”
People mostly wouldn’t quickly know the differences between “mechanical repair” and “body shops” let alone those of aftermarket vs. OEM parts. It’s more commonly: here’s my seven-year collision itch, what can we do?
Even farther down that list is branding for MSOs. Many don’t change the shop’s name and highway frontage is more immediately important. Drivers recognize the biggest players’ common names but regionals or smaller?
“A challenge for us is how to introduce the QCG brand; this gives us that opportunity,” Hall said.
QCG doesn’t change shop names, but has that word: quality. People don’t know them, but they know the word.
“Our only customer is the vehicle owner: safety, finding certified shops,” Hall said. “We consider ourselves the authority: that’s the main idea.”
“Certification” could grow over time — not as deeply in the psyche as say JD Power or Michelin, which takes decades. But not bad. Shops can get in on this now. The effort also primes QCG’s buying pump in slow times when no one’s on the block. Maybe QCG isn’t acquiring just now — but that’s strategic, not a rejection, Hall said.
“Shops may meet our quality and OE requirements,” and get the “quality” stamp of approval. That helps a shop now, he said, and perhaps presents future buying options. “Part of the thinking is to maintain the relationship.”
Making the Magic
Ads ran largely on connected TV — the streamers, like Amazon, which have been adding to advertising-based models. The internet has reinvented 1950s television. He said work was finished in San Diego after QCG’s April leadership conference. Media maker Mādin wrote the scripts, filmed the spot, created ads, handled PR.
QCG is working with automotive influencers too. Ads target its 12 states, but should get shared beyond.
Also, social media of course. Mādin CEO Nick Valenti said spots would run on YouTube shorts and on Meta platforms, including Instagram and Facebook.
“It’s national, but regionally focused. The aim was to be consumer-facing and how to educate them in a clever way,” Valenti said. He compared QCG to a boutique hotel chain and, in line with ads, to chefs: “attracting the best technicians … attention to detail.” The idea is that people want to go to the best restaurants, “and they want to go to the best shops.”
Example of "quality-branded" apparel in one of QCG's shops.
As the press release put it: “carefully plating parts and spinning car doors like pizza dough,” which is spot-on.
“Our request was we don’t want traditional creative,” Hall said. “We’re repairing cars in some instances better than from the factory. BMW procedures make the car stronger — Porsche, Audi, BMW commercials — that’s the level of creative.”
Hall called it “an awareness play. People have options for repairs; we want to get into that. We believe we’re setting the standard in auto body repair.”
He said clean floors and trained technician-chefs fit quite well with fine dining. The “quality-approved” tagline also is making its way onto what QCG staffers wear at shops: “A ‘quality company’ and a ‘quality-approved’ stamp” on apparel.
Similar Options for Smaller Operations
Valenti said smaller operations can do this. After all, restaurants getting Michelin stars are generally one-offs, and the marketing campaign itself is aimed at individual shops doing quality repairs.
“The short answer is yes,” Valenti said. “A lower production budget can still produce high-quality and market-specific ads.” He said Mādin works with clients “that want to do creative things to drive results.” It’s works in different industries, and has developed programs for a Formula 1 event in Las Vegas.
And apparel is available to pretty much any shop — your people have to wear something.
Shop consultant Matthew DiFrancesco viewed the ads and said, “That’s the type of marketing independent shops need to do [as in] ‘we do repairs right because we care about the customer.’ Consumers don’t know.”
Insurers have messaging emphasizing care for the consumer, “so why can’t collision shops?” DiFrancesco said. “Not the details necessarily, but quality repairs, following specs, using manufacturer parts — everything in the QCG ads.”
Shop owners “need to stress the value to the customer, their families, their lives. It’s a long-term undertaking, and what has to be done. More needs to be said.”
DiFrancesco acknowledged financial constraints. “You do what’s within your budget; it doesn’t have to be very much money.” He suggested two off-the-cuff ideas to start: go broad and go narrow.
On narrowing, DiFrancesco said shops can move to where they “don’t need to take on every single client out there. Addition by subtraction: fewer clients, higher profitability.” He’s done it in his own work, as well.
On the first, shops in an area could band together, and state associations could pursue such marketing. “It’s the car dealership model” where carmakers do regional ads. They might even get behind an OEM-focused effort in collision repair. For a region, is there a way for several groups to perhaps create something in a tri-state area?
Echoing age-old phrasing he said, “‘Talk to your local Ford dealer.’ Why can’t an association do this?”
Paul Hughes