Well-rounded?🫀 EBH
I did not expect to really fall for this employer brand
Really? A tire store?
Not only that but a discount tire store?
Let’s be fair, when you think of tire stores, you think of a chore you have to do, something that comes along once every few years that you never look forward to. It’s about a part of your car you don’t think much about, and probably don’t have much useful knowledge about them.
Maybe you picture a grimy store, where you’ll probably wait in a lobby that smells like motor oil and rubber, and you’ll wisely choose to not drink the coffee that has been sitting there since… well, since Henry Ford started his production line.
How could a place that sells discount tires have a strong employer brand?!
Now, to be fair, I haven’t owned a car in about ten years (#Chicago) so I haven’t been in a tire store since before Obama got elected, so I have no idea what the experience of shopping at a Discount Tire is like, but I can tell you how insanely impressed I am by their EB videos like this one of Mike.
It’s only 32 seconds long, but it is certainly worth watching.
Notes:
The “interview” takes place in the garage and you can hear the noises of the shop, even over the music. I really like that you can hear loud banging in the background. It doesn’t disrupt the information flow, but it makes everything feel more real.
Great use of still images to flesh out what is clearly a simple stand-up recording that took five minutes to do. It allows the brand to leverage Mike’s life outside DT.
Starting with “you think you’re going to learn about wheels and tires, but…” is a great way to set up a message designed to change the way you see the company. It knows what your assumptions about the job are and flips them.
In other places, a line about how “this job made me a better dad” would fall flat. It would feel self-serving or self-aggrandizing. It does here. If I ever heard a brand say, “you learn how to see life differently,” I’d be looking for the exits in a HURRY. But not here. The context, the situation, the pictures, and how it sets up and completes the frame for “we change more than tires” is just gorgeous.
Visually, it hits that sweet spot of “real,” but a more polished version of reality. It uses what seems like early Instagram filters (before IG became a haven for influencers who make a living on making you feel bad about your own life) to turn the emotional volume up on Mike, all before the rock soundtrack kicks in.
This video is saying A LOT. It says that a guy who is “just selling tires” can support his family of five and coach little league. This is how you use visuals to tell more of a story than you can fit into a script.
It even closes with a shot of Mike holding up a polaroid photo of himself in front of his face. It is saying, “We all know photos are by their nature contrived snapshots but we are trying to reveal more, breaking the borders of the photo to reveal something of Mike’s real life.”
32 seconds.
Really impressive stuff.
+++++
My new book is coming out in hardcover and ebook April 4th. Get a sneak preview at http://employerbrandingforsmallbusiness.com
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT (duh!)***
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