Most franchise car advertisements look exactly like every other dealership’s ads. They feature the same generic stock footage of a vehicle driving along a winding mountain road, the same year-end blowout headline, and the same manufacturer-prescribed promotional offers.
Dealerships often rely on these pre-made templates because they are fast, cheap, and convenient. When you are busy managing a showroom, coordinating sales teams, and handling daily operations, approving a ready-to-use template is an easy way to keep your advertising moving.
The challenge is that these templates are designed to do the wrong job.
There is a fundamental difference in advertising incentives: the manufacturer’s job is to sell the brand, while your job is to sell your store. When you use these generic templates, you are paying to build brand equity for the manufacturer while leaving your own rooftop completely invisible.
The Logo Test
We recently worked with a newly established dealership in Nebraska that was struggling to gain traction in their market despite a healthy television and digital ad spend. When we audited their active campaigns, we noticed that their commercials were indistinguishable from those of their direct competitors. They were using the same running footage and the identical monthly co-op promotions.
To show them the problem, we ran a simple experiment. We gathered their ads alongside their competitors’ commercials, stripped out the voiceovers, and covered the dealership logos. When we asked the leadership team to identify their own commercials, they couldn’t do it.
I challenge every General Manager to try this same exercise. Watch your last three commercials with the sound muted and the logo covered. If a local buyer cannot immediately identify that commercial as yours, you are not building brand awareness. You are simply advertising for the general automotive category.
Why Buy, Why You, Why Now
To break out of this category trap, your advertising must answer three distinct questions for the buyer:
Why buy?
Why you?
And why now?
Manufacturer templates and automated digital tools only answer the first and last questions. They tell the buyer why they should purchase a specific model and what discount is available this week. But they completely ignore the middle question: why should they buy from you?
Your dealership has a unique personality, a local reputation, and a specific reason why customers choose to do business with you. That identity is your most defensible competitive advantage, and it must show up in your creative messaging.
In a crowded, highly competitive market, blending in is functionally the same as being invisible. Every time you run a templated ad, you reset your local brand equity back to zero. Investing in creative that is distinctly yours builds equity with every run. Your advertising stops being a recurring cost and starts becoming the reason buyers think of your store first — before they ever start shopping.
Chris Petrawski
President, Head of Ad Strategy at Bedford Advertising.
Over a career spanning retail, automotive, and higher education, Chris has managed more than $500 million in advertising spend. His campaigns have earned a Gold Medal in the Educational Advertising Awards, multiple ADDY Awards, and a Best in Show TELLY Award, and his work has been featured by Facebook, Instagram, and the American Advertising Federation (AAF).
Chris also volunteers with Genesis Women’s Shelter, where he manages their Google Ads grant — work that earned him 1st Place in the AAF National Public Service Awards. In 2018, Ad 2 Dallas named him to its 32 Under 32, recognizing the top marketing and advertising professionals in DFW.
Since becoming President of Bedford Advertising in 2022, Chris has led franchise dealerships across the country in maximizing sales growth and profitability.