Pep Boys Focuses on the ‘Road Ahead’

Oh the times – they are a-changing. Digital advertising has forced every brand to move faster – or, better put, to move with the faster pace of technology. The latest Pep Boys initiative aims to keep better pace with their newly developing target market, coined the “do-it-for-me” crowd.

As opposed to the “do-it-yourself” crowd, this relatively newer type of consumer has more money, less time and less of a broad base of expertise, making shops like Pep Boys a potentially valuable player in the customer’s busy life. The underlying key to the initiative is the notion of value, and the process of giving the right value to the consumer.

Now, the notion of providing value to the consumer isn’t new, but the values themselves have changed. Pep Boys will be giving consumers leather couches, coffee, TV and WiFi, along with friendlier staff and shorter wait-times.

On second thought, none of those value propositions are new either. Maybe the digital world isn’t as effectively revolutionary as we thought. Perhaps we should just gain a bit of consumer insight and give our customers the age-old basics of good service. Wow, that actually seems really simple.

So, as we yawn in reaction to Pep Boys’ realization of what the customer wants (comfort, internet access, and some caffeine – who knew?), perhaps every business should reflect inwardly about the basics of good business. If a $500 million dollar business can miss the obvious for so long, imagine what a $5 million dollar business might be missing.

GEM Advertising helps those businesses find what they’ve been missing through multi-faceted branding campaigns that spark love affairs between them and their customer-advocates.

In closing, one thing is clear – I won’t be buying Pep Boys stock anytime soon.

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• Digital
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