As new staff members join Norbar, they each have an induction session with the three Directors and my induction session is centred around the Norbar brand and marketing. Following one of these inductions, a lady joining our electronic production team asked if she could see me because she had a marketing idea. Much as I love ideas I approach them with some trepidation because it is often the case that the idea will be unworkable for a variety of reasons such as cost and limited likely impact being the downfall of most great ideas. Why don’t we do TV advertising or why don’t we sponsor a F1 car being favourites.

This lady’s idea was simple: why aren’t we telling people how to change their car wheels following a puncture? She reasoned that as a torque wrench is required to do the job correctly, would this not be an opportunity to connect an issue that every motorist is aware of with the Norbar name?

Our first test for a marketing idea is this: does it help establish Norbar as The Voice of Torque? Answer in this case: yes, it does. Establishing Norbar as the go-to expert in the field of torque control is our ultimate marketing goal. If we can regularly expose our potential customers to the Norbar name in a way that they consider helpful and informative then, when the day arrives that they need a torque product, they might type Norbar into their search engine rather than torque wrench.
 

Having established that the idea passed the first test and was worthy of further consideration, the next question became how will we go about it? Video was the answer that sprang to mind so I went to YouTube to see what was already out there. What I found was that although this is a subject well covered, including by some prestigious bodies, they were not using torque wrenches. The advice was to do the job at the roadside using a wheel brace and then take the car straight to a garage to get your work checked out with the proper tools. While I agree that most motorists will not carry a torque wrench in their car (not even I do that), there are a great many who might check their wheel nuts having got the car home.

It was during a visit to our PR agency, WPR, that the idea of this infographic came up. It does not replace the video, which we will certainly do, but the infographic can be used in a variety of media where perhaps we could not use video. In fact, the infographic almost becomes the storyboard for our forthcoming video. See infographic

we hope that you find it interesting and, if you have any thoughts on the subject then please let us know.

Philip Brodey