Fox Motors Brand Standards
Branding Design
When Fox Motors first opened its doors in 2000, they didn’t just join the car dealership industry, but quickly became leaders in the Midwest. In the past 20 years, the company has grown exponentially – now with 47 brands represented by over 1,500 employees in 50+ locations. The rapid speed with which Fox grew, meant certain corporate planning for the entire group became a more reactive out of necessity, rather proactive planning from the beginning. Brand Standards was among these early missing items.
What Previously Existed?
Out of necessity, as the number of stores grew and logo usage needed to be consistent, various small reference docs were created. Unfortunately most guidelines were not thorough enough for usage outside of company marketing members and allowed a lot of room for interpretation.
Adding Fox Programs.
During Grace’s time with Fox she helped develop new Fox Programs, each with unique branding, to fit the needs of the company at the time. These programs ended up having more longevity than the original task promised. As a result these new branded programs became a part of Fox’s culture and initiatives, and needed to be incorporated as a cohesive group into the Fox Motors Brand Standards.
Here is a view of the Fox Programs incorporated into the new 2021 version of the Fox Brand Standards.
Grace’s Role with the Project.
In Grace’s role as Senior Graphic Designer, she took on a very challenging task of bringing together a disjointed group marketing effort, and unifying Fox' Motor’s look, feel and voice as a company.
Until Grace stepped into this leading role, for the entire Fox Motors Group, Fox did not have a guardian focused entirely on the integrity of the brand. This was a role that was sorely lacking. It was through the creation of this Senior Designer role that Grace became the primary director of all things creative, so no one was better suited within the company to take on the responsibility of rewriting Fox Motors’ Brand Standards.
Who Are The Users?
Until this 2020 recreation, the Fox Motors Brand Standards were used primarily for sending to marketing contacts, outsourced for community advertising.
As Fox has developed its in-house marketing team since 2018, the new brand guidelines will now be used internally, for new hires in the creative department to become acquainted with the Fox brand.
Additionally, the Fox Marketing Team will continue to send an abbreviated version to agencies and community partners when sharing a store’s logo for community advertising use.
The Design Process.
Since there was very little to guide and update from, these brand standards were essentially created from scratch, using the knowledge I had built getting to know the Fox Brand in the first four years with the company. I had already become the final say in all branding choices within the in-house marketing team, so my writing it all made the information accessible to all.
The biggest challenge for me as a designer, were two things:
The general logos (Fox Motors and Dealership Store Logos) were previously established and could not be changed, no matter what difficulties we ran into while using them. Unfortunately, the naming and logo structure for our stores was established when the number of stores were much less, and the store names were significantly shorter. The newer stores, using longer names to differentiate themselves, proved to be quite a challenge.
Each store provides sales and service for specific manufacturers. Each manufacturer requires certain branding unique to their brand to be used at our stores, however we still want to make sure we appear as a unified dealer group to our customers. This balance of individuality as well as room for customization is a continued challenge through all store marketing efforts.
The Result.
Though this is a working document, with changes happening at least once a year, the current 2022 version of the full document can be viewed down below. We intentionally kept the topics brief, focusing on misuse and degradation of the brand. As Fox Motors Group continues to grow, the marketing and branding need to adapt.
At least now, we have a single document to reference and update, to ensure a more consistent approach moving forward as a company.
