Introduction
After leveraging BOLTGROUP’s brand and product design expertise with products like Benchtop PRO, CRC saw an opportunity to partner with BOLTGROUP again, this time to address new market challenges for one of their leading brands, CRC Brākleen. Historically CRC Brākleen’s “Red Can” (their Chlorinated Brake Parts Cleaner Formula) has been their highest performing product, but due to rapidly changing market dynamics, their “Green Can”(a Non-chlorinated Brake Parts Cleaner Formula) needed to be repositioned to meet customer needs, maintain market share, and lay the foundation for future growth.

Challenge
Lacking up-to-date information, the CRC Brākleen team desired to better understand their market size, share, and competitive landscape, as well as understand CRC Brākleen’s positioning relative to competitors. For regulatory reasons, it was clear that the Brake Parts Cleaner market would quickly be eliminating chlorinated formulas, leaving a more saturated landscape of non-chlorinated formulas for consumers to choose from. This evolution would mean a potential shake-up of market shares, leaving CRC in heightened competition. At the same time, the company was also developing a new strategy for global repositioning. This meant that the CRC Brākleen team, and BOLTGROUP, would need to strategically work to optimize budget spend and align any new product brand strategies with the developing overarching brand strategy.

Solution
The CRC Brākleen brand carried with it a successful product story since it became the original aerosol brake parts cleaner in 1971. To embrace this history while providing for the brand’s continued success into the 21st century, BOLTGROUP conducted market and consumer research to help the team understand their current landscape and customer. This consumer research included gathering perspectives from hundreds of thousands of technicians and DIYers relying on CRC brake maintenance products. With this research BOLTGROUP then communicated back to CRC what their current and future customers would care about as they worked to strategically pivot their product catalog and position the company for growth.

With a new understanding of the market and its consumers, BOLTGROUP then developed a product brand strategy and a messaging platform aligned with the new global repositioning strategy that would (1) help convert “Red Can” buyers to “Green Can” buyers, (2) justify premium pricing, and (3) position the brand for growth.

Result
CRC relaunched the CRC Brākleen brand to current and future customers with new and increasingly compelling assets that allowed them to quickly respond to market changes, be proactive in addressing regulatory changes, and enter new marketing channels. CRC has been a market leader for decades, and through partnership with BOLTGROUP, they have remained leaders in the brake maintenance product market instead of reactionary participants. In keeping with the CRC Brākleen brand vision, together we were able to keep the people who do the work that keeps the world moving forward, moving forward.