Lojack

Your first week you find that the business is not very good---and the company is losing money? Why?

Because of a failed Sales/Marketing strategy conceived by some Harvard MBA who never sold anything in their life.

The problem? Where to start. First....the advertising campaign is a print ad showing men in duck costumes sitting in a jail cell. The idea....is...that LoJack makes car thieves sitting ducks. Cute...but what is the consumer benefit? That I should pay about $600 for a LoJack so the cops can bust thieves?  I don't think so.

What is in it for the car owner? The first order of business is to change the communication strategy to convince consumers that they need to get their car back fast if stolen...to minimize the damage and financial loss to auto theft. If you don’t get it back fast....your car will be trashed and you will still be stuck with it.  Or...if you have a car loan or lease...the insurance settlement may be less than what you owe to the bank Yikes...maybe LoJack makes sense to me now.

To get the message across...with no real marketing money....you go and meet with the local Boston radio DJ’s and give them LoJack for their car. They invite you in to talk about it. Soon one of them has their car stolen and recovered by LoJack....and they talk about it all day on the radio. Now you start writing up recovery stories and faxing them to your DJ friends...and you pay them to read the stories live on the air. Before you know it people are gathered around water coolers asking “did you hear that latest LoJack theft story?”

The buzz is building but the distribution of the product is no good. The Harvard genius decided to build LoJack install centers around town like a Jiffy Lube. But no one shows up. People don’t buy auto security that way. They like to buy auto security when their car is brand new. So you visit all the car dealers and convince them that they should sell LoJack at the time the car is sold. Car dealers love the idea and LoJack becomes the second most profitable item they can sell after the car itself.

Now you hire a team of sales people to take the word to all dealers...and to train their sales teams.

Before you know it the Boston area sees about 20% of all new cars being equipped with LoJack. More thefts happen.....more recoveries...more chop shops busted. More LoJack news and PR.

But there is still one more opportunity....people continue to buy car alarms instead of LoJack. So what do you do...simple...you source a low cost alarm and announce via radio “Free Car Alarm when you install a LoJack!” The business triples overnight.

Simple...now take the Boston results nationally....to New York...California....Detroit...Chicago....Atlanta...Miami etc....and duplicate the success.

The stock value of LoJack jumps from less than $1 when you joined to over $20 on Nasdaq. Lots of happy shareholders.