Automotive specialist adds lane with marketing firm

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

December 23, 2024

EAU CLAIRE – Sometimes one business’s success can springboard into another successful business – even in a totally different industry.

Owner Phil Norvold said that’s been the case regarding his longer-term venture, Max-Bilt Off-Road automotive shop, and more recent enterprise, Legends Marketing LLC.

If the route between the two seems “off-road,” Norvold said, the detours have made for an enjoyable ride.

Gearing up

Norvold said he started Max-Bilt Off-Road automotive shop – a general automotive shop in Eau Claire that also does custom vehicle builds/rebuilds and manufactures products for vehicles – 17 years ago.

Since opening, he said the shop has helped to create uniquely customized vehicles for customers but also participated extensively in trade shows and other events that helped their business skyrocket.  

“We really understood the importance of brand partnership, strategic marketing and cultivating a culture and following for a brand,” he said. 

In 2016, Norvold said Max-Bilt caught the attention of the Discovery Network, whose executives pitched the idea to him and his associates of having their own reality TV show about their shop – saying they were the next best thing to “Diesel Brothers,” a since-ended reality show about friends in Utah who repaired and customized pickup trucks. 

“It was a crazy time because these kinds of shows were becoming very popular,” he said. “We kind of got caught in the whirlwind of being greenlit for a TV show, then we were greenlit for branded content, which meant we could have a TV show but needed someone to pay for it – so you had to get a sponsor on board.” 

Still, Norvold said synergy was working in the shop’s favor. 

Through their trade show presence and other events and promotions, he said Max-Bilt got the attention of executives at Advance Auto Parts and wondered if Advance might be willing to help finance Max-Bilt’s TV debut.

“We got in the same room with some marketing executives from Advance Auto Parts, but they had something else in mind altogether,” Norvold said. “They were less interested in helping us fund a TV show and more interested in partnering with us as a consulting firm.”

Norvold said Advance Auto wanted them to take some of the ideas they had for  their business and businesses they partnered with in the off-road industry, and “see if we could apply some of the same ideas and tactics to humanize a brand and help it get really big (for them).”

He said he found the offer exciting and flattering, and if it essentially dashed the prospects of the reality show from coming to fruition, he was okay with that, too.

“Honestly, with a lot of those TV programs, you lose a lot of integrity in your brand,” he said. “But the way it turned out, we were able to help more people by doing what we believe in without having to be controlled by a TV network or sponsors, etc.”

Norvold said everyone he talked to who’d been down the road of reality TV did a “pretty good job of trying to talk me out of it.”

“Mainly because of the integrity you have to sacrifice,” he said. “So at Max-Bilt, we’re still doing a lot of customization of vehicles, but don’t have to do it on a national stage or without having to act in a way that might not align with who we are.”  

Honing a brand

In June 2019, drawing upon their branding prowess from Max-Bilt, Norvold said he and his wife, Heather, formed Legends Marketing. 

Later that year, building on the connections made through Max-Bilt, he said Advance Auto Parts retained them as their consulting and marketing firm. 

For a time, Norvold said Advance was Legends’ primary or even sole client.

Early on in the partnership, he said the firm was able to identify a large gap between the Advance’s sales division and its marketing division. 

“We felt that through strategic connection plans, we could bridge that gap and make the company more effective to their end user,” Norvold said. 

With the additional, yet successful efforts, he said the endeavor added to their workload and was all the more relieved the television deal for Max-Bilt hadn’t come to fruition. 

So prosperous was this relationship, Norvold said, that in 2023, Legends Marketing was named Advance Auto Parts Marketing Vendor of the Year. 

Having helped Advance’s sales explode into previously uncharted territory, he said the Legends team decided to capitalize on the situation.

“We were responsible for the growth over five years of $130 million in revenue,” he said. “We decided that was a great jumping-off point to be able to take everything we’d learned over the years with Advance and open that up to more corporate clients.”

Over the years, Norvold said they had done some events, event activation and brand partnerships with other companies that were spurred from Max-Bilt but had really grown in Legends’ space.

“We wanted to do more of that with other clients,” he said.

A new home

Norvold said with clientele retained into 2025, in May 2024, Legends opened a brick-and-mortar location at 3460 Mall Drive, Suite 3, in Eau Claire, moving operations out of the Max-Bilt location. 

He said prior to the Mall Drive location, he and Heather were trying to run two businesses – Max-Bilt, which was growing, and Legends, which was just getting off the ground. 

In addition, Norvold said Heather also had a very successful group home business that she was running. 

“So, our plate was full, but what allowed us to grow even more was that my right-hand man at Legends – ‘Coop’ Cooper, who has his own following from being on local radio for many years – is an integrator by nature and is easily able to take direction,” he said. “I was able to put him in a position where he could keep an eye on the business so I could focus on other things.” 

Because they opened the brick-and-mortar location this year, Norvold said they’re considering 2024 to be their first actual year of business, despite earlier successes. 

Currently, Legends has approximately 12 clients, he said, focusing on the quality of the work rather than the quantity of clients, while achieving growth goals.

“We wanted to have more than $1.5 million in sales within the first year – meaning by May of 2025,” Norvold said. “We are on track to hit and probably exceed that number.”

A sensible philosophy

Beyond sales, Norvold said the best sign of quality work is the Legends team “working ourselves out of a job.” 

“If we do (the work) right for our clients, in a year or two, they’re not going to need us, because we’re going to help teach and train them to be the most effective in communicating their story to their client base,” he said. “That’s our approach and philosophy, anyway.”

Legends’ services include strategy, branding, content creation, event activation, booth design, brand partnerships, graphic design, print services and merchandise fulfillment. 

Norvold said the firm also has a lot of trade show experience and has successfully capitalized on the importance of social media, though he intends for Legends to expand its digital marketing capabilities.

“We plan to be a marketing agency that can handle all aspects of marketing for a business, no matter the type, no matter the size,” he said. “That’s part of our three-year plan.”

Norvold said Legends finds clients in a few different ways – mainly as referrals from existing clients and cold calls – but the conversations with new clients always start with “a lot of exploring and fact-finding so we can completely understand their company.”

“If a client is looking for marketing direction, they likely don’t even know what good marketing looks like,” he said. “I believe good marketing starts with setting a North Star, or a heading, if you will. Every initiative underneath that needs to be pointed at and going in the direction of that heading. If you have that, then any sort of campaign, activation, event or any type of promotion you do, should move you toward that mark.”

As part of their process for clients, Norvold said the firm meets with the head of each organization’s departments, a revealing process that has unearthed previously unconsidered internal marketing issues Legends can then help to address.

“Ultimately, all of that formulates into something we can pitch to them, letting them know how we’re going to solve their problems, how long it’s going to take, how much it’s going to cost and how much return on investment they can expect to achieve,” he said. 

Norvold said though their automotive background makes that industry feel natural to them, Legends considers its services effective for virtually all industries.

“We believe that our edge can be applied in any business where the owners are passionate about their brand and interested in growth,” he said. “That’s just our philosophy. Our tagline is ‘Think Globally. Act Locally. Be Relevant.’ If those things can be applied to your business, we’re your team.”

Visit wethemlegends.com for more on Legends Marketing.