A new ad campaign is urging tire consumers to "Go with the Coopers" when buying new tires.
The campaign, which Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. launched this past September, "is a significant effort for us," Jessica Edgerton, the company's director of brand development, told Modern Tire Dealer during this week's Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show.
"This is the first place where we've been able to talk to a lot of people about it," she said.
The campaign - which includes TV sports, as well as print and digital ads - features a newly created company "spokesman" named "Uncle Cooper," whom the Findlay, Ohio-based tiremaker describes as "a no-nonsense relative who is an expert in all things automotive."
Edgerton said Cooper conducted extensive customer research as part of the campaign's development and discovered that "customers would go to buy tires, but there was a lot of information" to sift through. "And not a lot of it was helpful."
"'Go with the Coopers' is about helping consumers get the answers they need," said Edgerton. "We're trying to make it easy on them with all of the branding we're doing," including in-store point-of-sale materials for Cooper tire dealers, who had a significant voice in the campaign's development.
"We look at this as being just as important to (Cooper dealers) as it is to us," she noted.
