Dulux Automotive Coatings has operated in Australia for more than 100 years. Its division, Dulux Automotive Coatings, has been providing painting and coating products for passenger and commercial vehicles while also supporting the light industrial market for over 50 years.
Dulux Automotive Coatings’ paint solutions provide protection to vehicles from damage on the road while retaining an aesthetic appeal, and the business has struck this balance efficiently with its FleetShield line of high-performance topcoat products which provide quality vehicle coverage. The product range was also recently revamped as part of Dulux Automotive Coatings’ effort to better organise the product range’s offering, according to Dulux Group Technical Manager, Kathryn Murphy.
“The FleetShield range used to be made up of a few different brands, but we’ve now decided to consolidate these brands and make our range an easy-to-use system,” she says. “We had observed that the different product names were causing some confusion amongst consumers.
“By bringing everything under one brand name, this confusion is eliminated and the products are now easier to understand.”
FleetShield also received specific colour coding so that the products within the range would be better differentiated. Making the difference in applications clearer to customers, DuluxGroup Senior Development Chemist, Pieter-Jan Voorter, says, was a priority.
“We’re now using different colour coding to group our products in a new way,” he says. “This will make it easier for customers to tell our products apart which in turn streamlines the buying process for them.
“They’ll know what they need quicker so it’s much better overall.”
Kathryn shares that the branding redesign, although quite recent, is being well-received. Dulux Automotive Coatings is confident that the product range’s key value propositions of colour variety, durability and easy application will now be better communicated to consumers.
“We’re in the process of receiving some customer testimonials on the product’s redesign,” she says. “We’re hearing good things from our marketing and sales teams which is very promising.”
The aforementioned key value propositions have, of course, been unchanged throughout the rebranding process. FleetShield’s wide variety of colour options and strong durability are still primary sources of pride for the company which set the product range apart.
FleetShield’s topcoats offer fleet owners the opportunity to paint their vehicles in different metallic and pearl colour effects without the need to use a base coat. These unique colour offerings were the result of customer feedback and the hard work of Dulux Automotive Coatings’ own colour team which, as Kathryn describes, achieved the expansive colour range through meticulous experimentation.
“The feedback we have received from customers is that they want to be able to paint their trucks in the same sort of finishes as passenger vehicles,” she says. “We saw that other products in the market weren’t offering the same kind of colour availability or were difficult to use.
“To fill this gap, our local colour team developed the colours that are now on offer. They were heavily involved in formulating the metallic and pearl colour effects so that they would pop out on vehicles.”
These colour options were then rigorously tested to ensure their durability. Pieter explains that Dulux, through many trials, simulates the different harsh conditions that transport vehicles could be exposed to in their journeys.
“We put our FleetShield colour options through standardised testing which involves exposing them to various hazards, from stone chipping to salt spray,” he says. “The conditions we test FleetShield’s durability in are quite broad and we always benchmark it against our competitors. We are always striving for our product to perform better than that standard.”
Additionally, FleetShield’s colour options and durability are further bolstered by the product’s extremely intuitive application, making it accessible for consumers to use and more attractive as a result. Kathryn stresses the importance of these three strengths being evenly present instead of one being sacrificed for others.
“It’s all well to say we could offer any colour that people wanted, but we need to make sure we’re not compromising the product’s durability,” she says. “Nobody wants their truck to be faded in six months, and we don’t want our customers to come back to us and tell us that our paint is too hard to use. It needs to be easy to apply.”
Dulux Automotive Coatings is extremely committed to keeping its customers’ expectations in mind when developing new coats. The research and development team even travels with the sales team to meet customers and get their feedback face-to-face.
“We go to customers and talk to them about the product they want to see as well as how we can improve on what we’ve delivered and what we can take away to better market FleetShield,” Pieter says. “I personally travel with our sales team to establish a direct connection with the customer so that we can keep their product vision as clear as possible in the design process.”
Hearing this unfiltered communication from the customer is essential for Dulux Automotive Coatings to strike its signature balance of colour, durability and easy application. As Kathryn remarks, it’s the customers who are the most important part of the equation.
“Our technology and products are driven by the end result that will ensure what will make our customers happy the most,” she says. “They’re buying FleetShield, so they need to be satisfied.”
The FleetShield range has long been a centrepiece of Dulux Automotive Coatings’ product offering, efficiently catering to the wide market of commercial road transport with its attractive and durable solutions divided under different names and labels. Now, having undergone a significant branding redesign, FleetShield is ready to service its customers and make their transport fleets both striking and strong.
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