BRAND LENS
EV-era
All brand work assumes EV-transition narrative as a present-tense reality.
SECTOR 18 — PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Automotive
& MobilityEV-era positioning, dealer enablement, and fleet & SaaS mobility plays for OEMs, dealer groups, and mobility tech.
OEMDealer-GroupEVMobility-SaaS
18
Practice scope
Automotive operators are rebuilding their brands and channels around the EV transition while managing a dealer network, fleet customer, and mobility-software roadmap simultaneously. We help OEMs, dealer groups, and mobility-tech operators navigate that compound rebuild — brand, retail, fleet, and software — without breaking the relationships that fund it.
- Engagement
- 14–22 wks · avg length
- Audience
- OEM + dealer
- Disciplines
- Strategy · Brand · Build · Growth
- Adjacent industries
- Transportation & Logistics · Manufacturing & Industrial · Energy & Utilities
01
CH · 01 / 10 — Snapshot
The sector in four numbers and a posture.
Every industry opens with the same four-cell read: regime, engagement length, audience structure, and the operating signal that determines how this sector buys. Automotive & Mobility is no exception.
AVG LENGTH
14–22 wks
OEM and dealer-group rebrands run long; mobility SaaS sprints are shorter.
AUDIENCE
OEM + dealer
Most engagements span OEM and franchise / dealer-group audiences.
MODEL
Retail + fleet + SaaS
Three motions usually live under one corporate brand.
02
CH · 02 / 10 — Forces
Three forces reshaping automotive & mobility.
We don't open with claims about ourselves. We open with what's actually pressing on the operators we serve — the structural shifts that determine which kinds of brand and demand work compound this cycle and which don't.
FORCE 01
EV is the brand
Whether or not an OEM ships EVs, the EV transition determines how every brand reads. The narrative compounds for early movers and degrades for late ones.
FORCE 02
Dealers are the experience
Whatever the OEM does in advertising, the dealership is the customer experience. Dealer-group brand work is now the bottleneck.
FORCE 03
Mobility = software
Fleet, mobility, and SaaS operators sell to enterprise the way SaaS companies do. The marketing has to clear that bar.
03
CH · 03 / 10 — Sub-sectors
Four families under one practice.
Automotive & Mobility isn't one customer. It's four — and the engagement scope, audience, and creative language we ship varies materially across them. The industry covers all four; most engagements pick one.
01
OEM & Manufacturer
Auto OEMs across ICE and EV. Brand, model-year, and corporate-narrative work.
02
Dealer Groups
Public and private dealer groups. Group brand, store digital, and customer experience.
03
Fleet & Commercial
Fleet operators, commercial-vehicle OEMs, leasing. B2B brand and contract collateral.
04
Mobility SaaS & Aftermarket
Connected-vehicle, telematics, charging-network, mobility software. SaaS-style marketing.
04
CH · 04 / 10 — Buyer-side
Who we actually work with.
Most marketing decks address an "audience". We address a person — usually one of three, with a budget, a quarter to defend, and a specific frustration with the marketing they've been shipped before. These are them.
CMO / VP MARKETING
EV-era brand
Owns the corporate brand through the EV transition.
“Every model year used to be a marketing campaign. Now it's a brand referendum.”
DEALER GROUP CMO
Group brand & retail
Owns brand across dozens to hundreds of stores.
“Each store thinks it's a brand. The group never adds up.”
VP FLEET / MOBILITY
B2B + SaaS motion
Sells fleet and mobility software to enterprise; needs SaaS-grade marketing.
“We sell to the same buyer as a SaaS company. We market like a car company.”
05
CH · 05 / 10 — Problems
Six problems we solve repeatedly.
Industry-specific, not generic. Each of these has been the headline problem on multiple automotive & mobility engagements, and the work below is purpose-built for the regime, audience, and review cycle this sector lives inside.
P · 01
EV-era brand repositioning
Corporate-brand work that holds up across ICE, hybrid, and EV portfolios.
P · 02
Dealer / franchise enablement
Co-op marketing, store digital, and dealer-group brand systems.
P · 03
Direct-to-consumer tension
Reconciling new D2C plays with franchise relationships.
P · 04
Fleet & commercial channels
B2B brand and contract collateral for fleet and commercial-vehicle.
P · 05
Mobility SaaS buyer journeys
Enterprise SaaS marketing for connected-vehicle, telematics, charging.
P · 06
Aftermarket & service brand
Service, parts, and connected-services marketing under the brand.
06
CH · 06 / 10 — Engagement
Five deliverables we ship in this sector.
An engagement is a stack of these — chosen against your problem, your timeline, and the disciplines we need to bring. Most automotive & mobility engagements pick three to five and run them in coordinated phases.
BRAND
Brand + model-year launch system
Reusable launch system across model years and EV portfolio extensions.
BUILD
Dealer portal & co-op collateral
Group-and-store digital, plus co-op marketing infrastructure.
GROWTH
Consumer funnel & configurator
OEM and dealer-group consumer experience and conversion.
STRATEGY
Fleet contract collateral
Fleet and commercial-vehicle B2B materials and pursuit infrastructure.
GROWTH
Mobility-SaaS GTM package
Enterprise SaaS-style GTM for connected-vehicle and mobility software.
07
CH · 07 / 10 — Blend
Discipline weighting for automotive & mobility.
Every sector pulls on our five disciplines differently. This is the calibrated weighting — the dosing we default to on a typical engagement, before we adjust to your specific brief.
The weighting reads left-to-right as the share of senior-team focus on a default engagement. Strategy and brand carry most engagements; legal-and-compliance is supporting. No discipline disappears entirely; the ratio is what changes.
08
CH · 08 / 10 — Outcomes
Four outcomes we measure on.
Numbers below are anonymized engagement medians from comparable automotive & mobility cohorts. Every one of them traces back to a named brief, a measurement window, and a method we'll walk you through in person before you commit to anything.
EV CONSIDERATION
+19pts
Median EV-consideration lift on owner-of-ICE brand cohort post-rebuild.
DEALER ADOPT.
+58%
Co-op marketing program adoption after enablement rebuild.
FLEET WIN
+24%
Median fleet-RFP win-rate after contract-collateral rebuild.
MOBILITY ARR
+1.8×
Mobility-SaaS pipeline lift after GTM package.
09
CH · 09 / 10 — Sector FAQ
Things we get asked every intake.
A short list of the questions automotive & mobility buyers ask us before signing. If you've been here before, the rest of the process will feel familiar; if you haven't, this is a useful first read.
FAQ · 01
Do you handle franchise-dealer co-op marketing?
Yes — co-op marketing infrastructure, dealer-portal design, and group-and-store digital are core scope. We work within the OEM's co-op program rules rather than working against them.
FAQ · 02
Can you support EV-charging and mobility-network operators?
Yes. EV-charging operators, mobility-as-a-service platforms, and connected-vehicle SaaS are inside scope as enterprise-grade GTM work.
FAQ · 03
What about commercial vehicles and fleet?
Yes — commercial-vehicle OEMs, fleet operators, and leasing companies are inside scope, treated as B2B-industrial engagements.
FAQ · 04
Do you work on car-shopping platforms or marketplaces?
Yes — third-party marketplaces and car-shopping platforms are inside scope, treated as consumer-platform brand and product engagements.
10
CH · 10 / 10 — Adjacents
Other industries worth pulling.
Automotive & Mobility doesn't sit in isolation. These are the practice groups we most often run alongside it — operators who share buyer audiences, regulatory regimes, or commercial dynamics with the work covered above.
SECTOR 08 · PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Transportation & Logistics
Operator-facing UX, route economics, and enterprise contract plays for 3PLs, freight tech, and last-mile operators
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 05 · PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Manufacturing & Industrial
B2B demand gen, channel enablement, and rebrand work for heritage operators and industrial-tech challengers
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 06 · PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Energy & Utilities
Transition narratives and stakeholder-grade content for utilities, IPPs, clean-tech operators, and oil-and-gas majors
PULL INDUSTRY →
If your team operates in automotive & mobility,
this is what an intake looks like.
One 45-minute call with a partner, no slides. We use the time to map your problem to the chapters in this industry and tell you — honestly — whether we're the right team for it. The answer is sometimes no, which is part of why our clients send other clients.