DealersOnline is a prominent business in South Africa's automotive industry, founded in 2007 as one of the first online auction marketplaces of its kind.

Their Challenge

The years that had passed had yielded success for the business, but much like many of the B2B technology businesses of the time, their narrative and subsequent identities were never carefully considered and were secondary to the functionality of the platform itself.

As the business grew and the technology became more readily available, new players began entering the market, and whilst this was always going to make it difficult to look and sound different to not only new customers but existing ones too, the battle for consistency in the messaging of the brand amongst internal teams was a difficult challenge to solve too.

William was looking for our help in “getting his whole team singing from the same song sheet, and having their market firmly understand its value”.

As with all Sleuth relationships, DealersOnline’s journey began with one of Sleuth’s largest and most in-depth narrative discovery exercises. With over 40 hours of interviews captured, and days worth of workshops conducted, we retreated to our desks to begin piecing the puzzle together.

The result? Well, it was exactly what William was looking for. A single source of the DealersOnline truth. A collection of stories, anecdotes and lessons, packaged in a literal storybook that became the true foundations of DealersOnline’s narrative.

As the base for all things DealersOnline, this served as the primary input into our Narrative DNA Profile development, which in turn became the foundation for a full, end-to-end rebrand.

The First Clue

With all of the foundations firmly in place, the next question became “how do we now roll this out to the market?”. As a B2B business, marketing itself had always taken a back seat, but they had a full frontline sales team responsible for carrying their brand and message to the market.

Whilst we filled the role of “temporary salespeople” within the DealersOnline team, we knew that this wasn’t going to be a sustainable solution in the long run, and we were collectively working towards filling a function that supported and supplemented the sales team and their primary roles.

Discovering New Clues

Whilst the DealersOnline name itself carried a lot of weight in the industry, the market began to indicate that whilst they knew the brand, the personal voices within it had become increasingly relevant and trusted in the industry.

To add another approach to this case, we began our journey of personal branding and creating equity in the DealersOnline founders’ own brands and networks to establish thought leadership reputations in the industry.

Another Suspect Emerges - Distribution

The sales teams had previously relied on their own abilities to make their customers both aware and interested in what DealersOnline had to offer. We wanted to get ahead of the curve and in front of prospects with the right message before the sales team needed to prime their own conversations.

We established a multi-channel, multi-media organic content strategy to begin getting the newfound narrative to the market. Tackling awareness and acquisition challenges from multiple fronts, including attracting new buyers to the platform, sourcing new partners as sources of stock and appealing to an audience as innovation partners to build and shape new offerings that would advance the automotive industry as a whole.

Doubling Down on Suspect 1

With a well-established approach to distribution in place, we were looking for a way to package our different pieces of content into high-quality, high-value productions that would allow us to leverage the insights we were sharing over a longer period of time - creating longevity and relevancy from a single source of content.

With 3 main areas of focus identified, we started to develop an approach to production and direction that would be the housing for these insights and ultimately serve to enhance the health and vibrancy of the auction marketplace, and encourage more active participation in the market.

• A weekly segment - a snapshot into the auction from the week that had passed.
• A monthly segment - a deep dive into the performance of assets and dealers on auction in the previous month.
• A podcast - forming a two-way communication channel to help the audience better understand the intricacies of the market.

Some Diversions

A working relationship that has stood this test of time was bound to yield some side quests that we have experimented with and conducted in order to test whether some of our assumptions were true. These include:

• Deep-dive research assignments to uncover the requirements of a new software solution.
• The UX and UI design of said software solutions.
• The launch and running of a direct-to-consumer business model to open up the used car marketplace to a public audience.
• The design and development of sub-brands and new identities to fit different offerings that we were experimenting with in the market.
• Plug-in assignments and projects for the design and narrative-based work for some of DealersOnline’s own customers and partners.

The Investigation Crosses Borders

During this time, DealersOnline had been preparing its next big step, taking the business international. With relationships in place with a couple of partners in the Middle East, the journey of replicating the online auction marketplace model in other underdeveloped automotive markets commenced.

Operating in the same branded house, DealersOnline International was born. Following the same approach to how we initially established the brand and narrative in South Africa, a universally relevant identity and story set took shape to focus on the MENA region initially, and beyond in the future.

Today, DealersOnline continues to operate its underlying auction technology, but has subsequently expanded its offering portfolio, reached well beyond South Africa’s borders, has not only grown its team but managed to maintain a high level of consistency within it and importantly for us, continued to deliver its narrative, brand and offerings to the market.