TYPE

Brand Site/ Ecommerce

The tire industry is extremely competitive and despite the fact that there are more cars in the road today than ever; consumers are still unsure on why or how they should pick tires and even what difference a tire makes in the quality of your ride, handling, performance and even fuel efficiency. We set out to reinvent how tires are bought not only online but in the store and giving Bridgestone an edge by becoming the first of the tire brands to sell directly to consumers.

Moving away from the traditional industry narrative, we wanted to differentiate Bridgestone from all other brands. We focused on education and technology-based benefits and eliminated the scare tactics used to equate the wrong tires to tragedy.

THE EXPERIENCE

The first thing we had to address was the consumer's inability to identify the appropriate tires for their car. We resolved this by creating a super charged search function that also doubled as a step-by-step assisted shopping experience. The end result would be only tires that would fit your car sorted by their primary feature.

While the previous solution gave our savvy researchers online a great way to quickly find the best tire and drove them directly to the store, there was still a large portion of consumers who are not even aware of the proper lexicon and meaning of the words to have the confidence that the product presented to them was the correct one.

This is why we brought live consultation to the site. Using live video conferencing (or chat), consumers would speak to a consultant using video chat technology allowing the consultant to guide them or simply walk their device/computer to the car and allow them to identify the right product.

This also allowed us to solve another problem by allowing us to schedule the service visit, since often times the shops may recommend other tires after the consumer arrives.

Part of our assignment was also rethinking the in-store experience due to concerns that despite the effectiveness of the marketing the individuals at the store could still recommend a different product. Various contributing teams had been redesigning the physical experience including the flow and visuals, but as part of it we needed to address education, choice and incentive at the point of purchase. Part of it we addressed by getting the people online to buy and schedule service in advance for the specific product but we needed something for the store so we redesigned the self-service tools.

Daniel Averso
Art Director

Alex Kim
UI/UX Designer

Julie Dickard
Client Partner

Brian Hamilton
SVP Experience