RENT A ROAD TRIP: Hertz Marketing Executive Laura Smith On the Future of Car Rentals

Your first ride in an electric car might be rented. Hertz, a legacy rental car company, is taking steps to evolve into a 21-st century mobility company. Its all in the TV ad starring future hall-of-fame quarterback Tom Brady charging himself up amid a fleet of Tesla Model 3s. Hertz has partnered with several companies that make electric cars, adding Teslas and Polestar vehicles to its fleet in regions where charging is plentiful. But Hertz hasn’t given up on gasoline altogether, especially in its thrill-seeking offerings. This summer, Hertz added racy Shelby Mustangs to its fleet as part of the longstanding partnership Rent-A-Racer program that dates back to 1966. Then there’s the company’s long list of hotel and airline partners, and even an Uber partnership.

Managing Hertz partnerships falls under the purview of Laura Smith who is EVP of Global Sales, Marketing and Customer Experience. In September, Smith celebrates two decades at Hertz. She is charged with making the legacy of the 100-plus year old rental company appeal to the next generation of customers, which dates back to Chicago and a dozen Ford Model T cars in 1918.  

Why don't you start by telling me some of the top of mind challenges that you're focused on in your role?

 I oversee global marketing, sales and partnerships, and customer experience for Hertz and including our contact centers around the globe. On an everyday basis, I have a really lovely opportunity to engage with a wide array of customers, and have a lot of access to data and insights that really helps inform me and my team, around our customers sentiment, and what they love about our product and service, and then opportunities for us to kind of hone different aspects of the experience across the journey.

 You've been at the company for some time, almost two decades. You've seen this transformation from what was once a more pen-to-paper process, and now is really a digital research tool where these insights are available. What do you think are some of the key trends that you're seeing?

You're exactly right. I will celebrate 20 years with Hertz in September of this year. The patterns that I have seen over all of that time are really around customer desire for more touchless experience, customized and personal experiences, and desires to be able to self serve. Maybe not all of the time, but certainly have the opportunity or options to self serve. Throughout the different journey points be that time of reservation, pick up drop off, or anything else related to the experience overall. 

Is there a difference between that customer who uses a vehicle to get from place to place and the person who considers the vehicle really part of the journey story for them?

There's a growing trend where the vehicle is actually the experience and we certainly see that customers care a lot more about the type of vehicle that they are selecting, for their journey, no matter how long or short that journey is.  We're really seeing that to be the case, as we have opened up an even broader array of different vehicles for our customers to choose from, most recently electric vehicles. That notion of connecting customers with moments that matter to them, connecting customers with people that matter to them, or places that they want to be, the enjoyment factor of the vehicle, and the road trip or the journey and having control over that, That was certainly true in COVID, even more important that our customers having a space that was dedicated to them individually, or to their family and or passengers, of their choosing. That entire space for them to really enjoy and thrive through their driving experience.

You've just launched a whole partnership with Polestar, which makes a pretty great premium electric vehicle, but not really well known brand. People are becoming comfortable with the idea of electric cars, and learning how to navigate, through electric cars. It must interesting what you're learning about EVs, as you build that part of the business out.

We really do pride ourselves on being first and leaders in this space and have a strategic goal to lead consumer adoption and behavior change. We see critical to realize a more sustainable travel industry and our customer experience teams, for some time now have been really heads down, trying to figure out how and to what depth and breadth, we needed to create material, be that video, written communication to really help our customers be comfortable and have confidence around some of the anxieties that they may have be it range. That has proven really helpful. We've developed a differentiated CRM experience. When a customer books an electric vehicle via Tesla, Polestar or any of the other OEMs that we're bringing on stream that the customer has at their fingertips, pre pickup, and in the early part of their pickup experience, everything that they might need to know, again, to have that confidence and really feel in control of that experience.

How broad is the role you are in?  Do you manage the hotel partners or individual sort of partnerships with like, Tom Brady, is that part of your scope?

They're two separate things, but both of them within my scope. We have an extensive and rich portfolio with partnerships across hotel, air, and credit card. The team and I have been engaged with all of the big brands that you might imagine. And some of these are published anyway, in terms of who we have exclusivity with in the hotel space, and the airline and car space around, partnering together to really pull this thread of a superior experience for someone who wants to have an electric car for their journey. But they also want to have that peace of mind in terms of where they will access and how they'll access charging infrastructure to charge that car overnight, perhaps at a hotel property. The real value in the partnership arrangements that we have are that we can give our customers experiences that are truly only available because of the power of the partnerships that we have across travel.

We recently partnered with Tom Brady to be our spokesperson for our brand.  The descriptor we've used for our campaign of “‘Hertz, Let's Go!’ you see that in the in the commercials. it's given us a really nice lift for our brands. And we have not always been the funniest brand.  We really wanted to do a couple of things, inject more humor, be a little bit more contemporary and edgy, and really lead with great products and partnerships, add that together contribute to just an increase in awareness, both of the new products that we're bringing to market and Tesla and Polestar as examples, but also Shelby. While the electric important for us, we also wanted to go back to our heritage, on bringing, custom, unique cars like the Shelby Mustang. We've come up with three vehicles that we partnered with Shelby American on for a three year exclusive partnership. We've had this in the past, actually, we’ve had had five generations of partnership between Hertz Shelby. Tom Brady acts as this great spokesperson, he himself, and we believe he stands for excellent leadership. He’s really, really hot on sustainability. It ticked a lot of those boxes, and he's been really a joy to work with.

Thinking about audience and Hertz: How do you think about who you're trying to reach as a customer?

Actually our target consumer is a female consumer. Bringing more of a younger generation into our funnel and attracting them to our brand is important, because, the macro trends are that car ownership is changing. Those patterns are changing. And certainly, if we are to give credence to trends around younger people, perhaps owning their own vehicle, or maybe applying for their driving license, , at a later stage, but the importance that they perhaps put on that not being the same as it was when I joined Hertz 20 years ago. We really want to make sure that we show up in a way that's relevant, provides value, and that people in those younger age groups, think about the availability and ease with which they can rent a Hertz car, as opposed to perhaps just solely using ride sharing.

 And then, so when you think about (your customer) how do you reach her? How do you get in front of her?

The partnerships is certainly one way. We've really expanded our presence socially, and  being relatable. A lot of female renters want to have confidence if they're traveling solo, and so things like safety, reliability, service, being there, I think that's really important. We spend a lot of time really making sure that across a broad range of channels, and support mechanisms, like if there is anything that someone needs, pre post or within the journey, and that the reliability and reputation of our brand comes to the fore and that we're absolutely there and available and able to do that.

 We've realized in the car industry that changes are coming, but it just takes a bit longer for people to catch on, to adapt. Is that kind of how you see future Hertz moving towards in the future, like really becoming like a true mobility company? Or is it more about like, just preserving this idea of the classic American Road Trip? Which one to you feels more resonant?

What resonates with me is probably the former of what you said. We're super focused on electrification, shared mobility, delivering a best-in-class digital customer experience. They are the core tenants upon which we make decisions keeping our customer and our brand in the center of the circle around those three pillars. It's having a range of different products for our customers to choose from and that really then facilitates road trips as they want to make them or as they choose to take them.