New Holland Tractors were already a lifestyle. We made them a lifestyle brand.
New Holland has been a trusted leader in the ag farming industry for generations. Across the fields and around the globe, the brand has embodied the rugged, hard-working spirit of its loyal, “True Blue” fans. New Holland partnered with us to enhance engagement with its customers and build brand resonance beyond the dealership.
Market Reality
For many farmers, brand loyalty is their very identity and they wear it proudly. While over 900 New Holland dealerships throughout North America have their own marketing presence and offer branded merchandise, it is considered more of an afterthought to equipment sales, often lacking in brand consistency, quality, and breadth of offering for the customer.
Market Opportunity
By leveraging customer insights, reviewing the competitive landscape and understanding the current merchandising strategy, we recognized an opportunity for New Holland to connect with its customers directly to help drive sales as well as grow its fan base.
Invention Strategy
We took steps to position New Holland as a lifestyle brand in order to appeal to and engage with customers in a more meaningful way.
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INSIGHTS
What is Market Invention?
It's the new era of marketing.
Market Invention is the process of creating and maintaining market dominance by leveraging insight, purpose, position, and experience to establish, grow, and maintain customer and company value.
COVID-19 CEO Survey
Back when COVID-19 was in its diabolical toddlerhood, circa May 2020, Merit asked CEOs from a diverse pool of sectors about their perceptions of COVID-19, and how they were tangibly handling its impact. These were not P&G, Google, General Motors CEOs, but CEOs of arguably the most important strata in the U.S. economy: small to medium-sized.
CEO Influenza?
If our CEO survey is any indication, the “can-do” spirit is still alive and well. As cultural Venn diagrams representing now and the near future collide – COVID, FLU, ELECTION, BLM – resiliency seems to be many CEO’s medicine du jour.
The Confidence Market
Thanks to COVID-19, we're all relearning how to do the things we were once experts at. We’re relearning our relationships and how we interact. We’re relearning how to be a customer, teacher, CEO, marketer, sales executive, investor, ect. And with everything happening so fast, the relearning curve is extra steep.
COGNITIVELY COVID: The CEO Guide to Fear
What might be the hardest part of being a leader? The expectation of fearlessness, as in the whole “fearless leader” facade. Crushing, isn’t it?
COGNITIVELY COVID: The CEO Guide to Denial
Everyone defaults to denial at some point. It’s the brain’s way of lining up all of our implicit biases and testing them against harsh realities. Ironically, it’s because we’re trying to make sense of things with mental shortcuts. Now, in the time of COVID-19, as we all feel the need to move fast, CEOs might want to be especially mindful of biases, especially the biases that support denial and impede invention during crisis.
COGNITIVELY COVID: The CEO Guide to Acting Fast
You’ve likely heard the term “first movers” in the context of new sector growth. Moving first to take advantage of opportunistic pathways thanks to COVID-19 is almost a new sector unto itself. One website we love, CovidInnovations.com, is a global gathering of hundreds of new products, new apps, new wrinkles to existing services all in the name of the new world.
The 10 Truths of the COVID-19 CEO
In the midst of loosening lockdowns and tightening restrictions, dropping infection rates and second waves, CEOs must adjust to new truths in changed industries. During many conversations with my peers, a few of those truths have surfaced time and again.