Two years ago, the Yanmar corporate office started to re-examine its brand with this question in mind:
Does everyone know who Yanmar is?
When it came to North America, the answer was, sort of.
Its marine motors are well-known among recreational boaters, but its construction equipment, tractors and myriad other products don’t share the same brand recognition as they do in other parts of the world. Sometimes company reps find themselves explaining that the 105-year-old company has 20,000 employees worldwide and is headquartered in Osaka, Japan. It invented the world’s first compact diesel engine in 1933, and over the years, the company’s engines have been used in construction and agricultural equipment made by large OEMs. It also manufactures compact wheel and track loaders, skid steers and compact excavators.
So the company’s North American subsidiary, headquartered in Adairsville, Georgia, began to plan a way to spread the word on the full extent of the Yanmar brand. The first thought was to expand training for its dealers, to help educate them on the company’s expertise.
“The best thing we could do is really have our dealers embody what we’re about, teach them the things that we think are important to the market and work with them to be doing those things in the market,” Yanmar America President Tim Fernandez says.
So, the idea was to build a technical center to provide that training and support. But during a company retreat over several days, the ideas kept coming.
