Tire Pros gives a hoot for national mascot

SAN DIEGO (Feb. 24, 2016) — American Tire Distributors Holdings Inc. (ATD) took the feathers — make that the wraps — off a national mascot for its Tire Pros franchise program during the company's 2016 Tire Pros National Dealer Business Conference.

ATD/Tire Pros unveiled “Hootie” the owl at the dealer meeting, which took place Feb. 21-24 in San Diego.

Actually, the company introduced the mascot at last year's dealer meeting, although at that time the feathered friend was dubbed “Professor Tire.”

Tire Pros President Dan Brown told Tire Business that Hootie will serve a symbolic role for the company as it works to boost consumer awareness of its brand on a national scale.

“As we looked around at other successful companies, we saw a number of the large national retailers have some sort of mascot affiliation to support the branding effort, and we felt that we needed something similar,” he said.

The company selected an owl as its mascot with assistance from an advertising agency, according to Mr. Brown.

“They came up with three or four potential options for us, and then we vetted those through the councils and had some conversations,” he said. “We ended up settling on an owl because we didn't know of another group or organization that had the owl as the mascot.

“We liked the symbolism of the owl in terms of being wise, and the cuddliness of it for appeal to children and mom and dad. We've already taken orders for over 3,000 of the little mascot, mini Hooties.”

Mr. Brown added that the Hootie mascot costume is available to Tire Pros dealers to rent for use at various community events.

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To reach this reporter: [email protected]; 330-865-6148; Twitter: @Will_Schertz