As a Jiffy Lube franchisee, I don’t typically make the “prospect list” of business development staff in the arts community. Everyone assumes that small business owners have limited resources, and working to convince us to get involved isn’t an efficient use of time when larger supporters often dedicate annual budgets to philanthropic initiatives.

At the same time, small business owners like me don’t often view the arts as an area in which we can make a real difference. Even our “stretch” sponsorship levels are overshadowed by the huge dollar amounts that wealthy individuals, banks, law firms, and insurance companies can generate. For us, philanthropy is difficult to plan for, so our sponsorship investments tend to come out of our advertising budgets. Therefore, we’re motivated to find ways to drive our business in more immediate, ROI-based campaigns than what is thought a typical sponsorship of the arts might provide.

These two assumptions make it too easy for both small business and the arts to ignore one another and focus our energies elsewhere. But the reality is that we should ALL do better and that partnering with the arts has an enormous payoff!

Jiffy Lube of Indiana was founded in 1985. For many years, like every other business in the automotive industry, we focused our marketing and branding on men and sports. Even though over half of our “guests” were women, the “expert theory” was that their husbands, boyfriends, or fathers were telling them where to go for automotive maintenance. When we did market to women, it was usually directed at soccer moms in minivans.

In 2015, we made a conscious decision begin speaking directly to women about the virtues of Jiffy Lube. We wanted women to know they could trust us to handle their maintenance needs and that they wouldn’t be subjected to chauvinistic or condescending mechanics. One of the ways we accomplished this was through a chance encounter with a local arts group.

What began as a way to cover up some graffiti at one of our locations has now evolved into a statewide effort to embrace the arts, specifically through painting murals on the sides of our buildings. Our first three murals were designed by The Department of Public Words, a three-person local arts group dedicated to the power of words. Their designs were broken down into “paint by numbers” stencils so that the larger community could contribute to them. We painted one at a Luke Bryan concert, another in a Jiffy Lube parking lot, and the third at Indy Reads Books.

Ellen Forney is a Seattle-based, New York Times award-winning graphic novelist who wrote the book Marbles to share her struggles with bipolar disorder and manic depression. We flew Ellen to Indianapolis to host a community mural painting and panel discussion on mental illness at a local independent bookstore, and we packed the house. This mural has also helped raise money for The National Alliance on Mental Illness through the sale of green ribbons at Jiffy Lube locations around Indianapolis.

These first three murals caught the eye of the Arts Council of Indianapolis, with which we partnered in 2018 to paint six murals, with another six murals planned for 2019. We had 20 artists apply to paint murals last year, and we already have 65 applications on file for 2019. The groundwork we’ve laid to build this program is suddenly being rewarded with incredibly positive word-of-mouth marketing that is giving people one more reason to visit our stores.

From a purely business perspective, this is a boon for us. Vehicles are going longer between oil changes and many only need one or two oil changes per year. This makes it easy to forget about your neighborhood Jiffy Lube. In addition, sign ordinances have become stricter, making it hard to identify our locations easily. By painting these murals, we are giving people an organic reason to talk about and pay attention to our stores.

Internally, we have been surprised at how many artists we have working for us. Our employees are now showing off their own talents through sketches, vehicle graphics, and tattoo designs. We are planning museum tours and art classes designed to help our people further develop their artistic skills, understanding that this will help drive creativity in our own business. Employee retention is a huge issue for many businesses these days, and we are no exception. People want to be proud of who they work with and they care more than ever about the mission and purpose of their employer. As employers, we have to do more than just provide work. We need to enrich lives. Every partnership we make involves negotiating ways for our people to enjoy the experience of attending the events, getting involved however they see fit, and enriching their lives. The longer we can keep people feeling proud of where they work, the longer we will be able to benefit from their efforts.

It is an exciting time to be part of a project like this as it takes on a life of its own, positively impacting our business, improving our communities, and exciting our people.

We can’t wait to see where it takes us next.