The Challenge
The Inoue Rubber Company (known as IRC) is one of the oldest and largest bicycle tire manufacturers in the world, with a history of innovation. For instance, IRC created the world’s first production mountain bike tire with Tom Ritchey in the 1980’s. There was a day when IRC tires were respected and sought after in the United States. IRC’s North American team fell asleep at the wheel, and while Inoue Rubber Company’s global business continued to flourish, the IRC brand in North America faded into irrelevance and anonymity. IRC Tire called on LiFT Creative Studios to bring their brand back to life in America.
Identity
One of IRC’s most immediate problems was that they made a premium product, but their packaging and visual styling were perceived as a low-end. Our team set out to totally re-vamp every aspect of the IRC visual language to align the public’s perception of the product with its actual quality.
No stone was left unturned. In addition to removing the corporate name (Inoue Rubber Company, Inc.) from the logo, we cleaned up and harmonized the letter forms to create a mark with a subtly crisper, more modern appearance.
Old look
New Look
Packaging & POP
We totally re-thought the packaging, developing a new concept that maintained shelf-space while maximizing branding. Market research suggested that consumers disliked boxes because they can not see or touch the tire.
A product display created for use at events shows the visual punch of the new packaging.
ADVERTISING
Web
Early on in our work with IRC, there was a stink around the brand. Distributors wouldn’t talk to the sales team. One event organizer told us we could not sponsor his event because our website was so bad, it would make his event look bad to have us as a sponsor. Yikes. We built a global corporate web plan, registered new URLs, set up temporary marketing sites, and then built three new sites for the US divisions, with an e-commerce back-end to enable IRC to launch an omni-channel strategy.
Social
Our team partnered with IRC to create and post to their social media accounts to keep things fresh and make sure their audience knew what IRC was up to.
EVENTS
One of the most successful things our team brought to IRC was event sponsorship opportunities and event activation. Our team designed and built trade show booths, set up celebrity group rides and parties at industry events, created expo booths, and did a restaurant takeover, and a retail pop-up shop. Through our tireless efforts at events, the bike industry and consumers started to take notice of IRC.
We brought IRC on as the official tire of the Belgian Waffle Ride, one of the largest gravel races in the country. We brought IRC from obscurity to 4th place in the tire count on year one. The second year, IRC won the tire count. Due to the excellence of our activation and involvement with the BWR, IRC is now being courted to sponsor other major events in the US.
Results
We were able to raise the perception of the brand, push product into the channel, and create demand in the marketplace to pull through. Sales doubled two years in a row.