Case Study · Automotive
A veteran-owned shop,
a 14-month partnership.
Mike and Jen Hayes built Veteran Vehicle Repair on integrity, ASE-certified work, and 20+ years of bench experience. Geneva Lakes Media has been embedded since launch — building the brand layer, the platform, the analytics, and the marketing systems that compound the trust they earn in the shop every day.
The numbers belong to VVR
240+ Google reviews
Customers in the database
Months as embedded partner
Disciplines shipped together
The Shop
Built by people who earned every review.
Mike Hayes served in the U.S. Army before he ever picked up a wrench professionally. Even during his service, he was the guy everyone came to when something didn't sound right under the hood. After the military, he spent 20+ years in automotive repair — every system, every certification — and built a reputation for telling people the truth about their cars.
Jen Hayes spent years in law-enforcement administration before walking away from a stable government job to run the shop's operations alongside Mike. She brought the systems discipline: scheduling, vendor management, insurance claims, and the customer-side advocacy that's now baked into how VVR does business. Mike fixes the cars. Jen fights for the customer.
They opened VVR on Madaus Street in Lake Geneva in 2020 — in the middle of a pandemic — to do auto repair the way they thought it should be done. The brand line came out of that: Rooted in Family, Forged by Veterans.
The work below is the layer Geneva Lakes Media has shipped alongside them. It's not the reason VVR is the top-rated shop in Lake Geneva. It's the system that lets more people find out about a shop that already deserved the title.
The Scope
Thirteen disciplines, one operator.
Every line below was built, shipped, and is still maintained by the same person. No subcontractors. No handoffs. No "we'll get you a quote from our partner team."
Brand Identity
"Rooted in Family, Forged by Veterans." Full brand system: logo, olive-green palette, Ubuntu typeface, icon library, and usage guidelines. The brand kit itself is a living design system page on the site.
Website & Platform
SvelteKit site spanning services, about, media, blog, reviews, careers, contact, and legal. Customer portal with vehicle tracking, service history, and account management. AutoOps booking integration built directly into the flow.
E-Commerce / Merch
Full online store. VVR hoodies — "It's not just apparel, it's a statement." Six military Component Shirts — Abrams (Army), Reaper (Air Force), Osprey (Marines), Virginia (Navy), Hamilton (Coast Guard), X-37B (Space Force).
Wear & Care Campaign
Cause-marketing tied to the merch line. Profits from $25 Component Shirts fund care packages for deployed service members. 40 packages shipped to date. Brand equity built on the values the shop already lived by — not a gimmick.
Service Star Rewards
Custom loyalty program: 24-hour roadside assistance, nationwide warranty, rewards dollars on every service, referral rewards, every 5th oil change free, family accounts, and a donate-to-charity option.
Careers & Hiring Pipeline
Careers page plus a candidate application pipeline built directly into the site. Applicants apply, attach a resume, and land in the VVR inbox — no third-party job board, no manual triage, no paid recruiter.
Motorpool Madness
Live automotive game show — concept, branding, scripting, multi-camera Canon C70 production, ATEM Mini Pro real-time switching, custom graphics, 6-platform simulcast, and post-production. Four episodes aired.
PPC / Paid Media
Google Search, Google Video, and Meta campaigns. Cost-per-acquisition below industry benchmark on every search account. Diagnosed a Meta pixel bug hiding bookings, fixed the tracking, and restructured the ad set.
Email / SMS Pipeline
Custom SMS via Telnyx with 10DLC verification. Email campaigns with personalized tokens pulled directly from the shop's Tekmetric data. Decline-recovery track targeting 923 specific customers about specific declined jobs on their specific vehicles.
Data & Analytics
Pulled and analyzed the full Tekmetric customer database and repair-order history. Surfaced declined work the shop didn't know it had, plus vehicle-age analysis, geographic segmentation, and job-mix breakdowns. The numbers go in the boardroom, not the portfolio.
Video Production
Three audience-segmented campaign scripts with full shot lists, production schedule, and technical specs — Canon C70, Cooke S7/i lenses, Canon Log 3, Vision3 grain. 15 ad-ready deliverables out of one shoot morning.
Print / Direct Mail
5×7 EDDM postcards — two creatives targeted to working-class and lake-house segments — routed by zip cluster, each with a unique trackable phone number for per-cluster attribution.
Social Content
Daily social media management in the VVR voice — direct, honest, human. Jesse's birthday post, Ryan's MRE videos, Breathe Inc. partnerships, holiday content, and customer stories that earned the shop's reputation.
Built inside the shop
VVR is where Worxflow was built before it shipped to anyone else.
Call coaching, decline-recovery, customer messaging, and the AI shop advisor "Sarge" — all stress-tested against real calls, real ROs, and real customers at VVR. The product gets to be honest because the platform team eats the same lunch as the service advisors.
The Operators
The reason any of this works.
A marketing system can only amplify what's already true. Here's what's true at VVR.
"I didn't open this shop to get rich. I opened it because I knew we could do better for the people in this community."
"I didn't just join the business. I joined the mission. Mike fixes the cars. I fight for the people."
Footer of every page on vvr.genevalakesmedia.com
"Media / Marketing / Design by genevalakesmedia.com"