Fifty years ago, R.W. “Bob” Cochran bought a Pontiac dealership in North Braddock. Today, his son, Rob, is the face of the company, thanks to more than 300 television commercials. He’s proud to be a third-generation salesman.
His grandfather, Bill Cochran, grew up in Wilkinsburg and was a sales manager for Clark Candy Co.
“My father grew up in parts of Daytona Beach, Fla. His father was a salesman, so my father moved around with him and was encouraged to sell at an early age,” Rob Cochran recalls. “He started with selling newspapers and gum and crackers on the beach in Daytona.”
After high school, Bob Cochran served in the military during the Korean conflict and was stationed in Japan. When he returned to his family in Homestead, they suggested he become a car salesman. He soon got a job at C.A. Clark Pontiac in North Braddock. After Mr. Clark died, he purchased the dealership and Cochran Pontiac was born.
A half-century later, #1 Cochran has 21 car dealerships that sell used vehicles of every make and 17 brands of new cars, including Ford, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Cadillac, Kia, Subaru, Nissan, Buick, GMC, Audi, Hyundai, Infiniti, Volkswagen and Mazda. The company claims to be the largest car dealership in Western Pennsylvania based on unit sales.
“When I was a kid, I really didn’t think I’d go into the business,” says Mr. Cochran, 49, president and CEO. “It wasn’t something that was very exciting to me.”
But his interest was piqued while he studied applied mathematics and industrial management at Carnegie Mellon University. “I realized that within the business, there was a lot of room for growth and creativity.”
His goals were to build a culture within the company and build a brand among the communities that the dealership served. “That is what really gets me excited.”
He began to appear in television spots in 1995. With the help of Mary Kay Roman, Cochran’s advertising and brand management director, he began to refine his on-camera persona and make it synonymous with the Cochran brand.
“We were showing the personal side of the organization and a little bit of the flavor of what we try to be,” he says. “That was the genesis of it.”
He says it was never really hard to be in front of the camera but credits good direction. “It was just something I had to get used to.”
Ms. Roman puts him in environments where he is comfortable, he says. He calls the commercials an “intimate process for hundreds of thousands of people to see.”
Mr. Cochran became CEO of #1 Cochran in 1992, the year before his father passed away at age 62. After 20 years of being the face of Cochran, he doesn’t really have any favorite commercials.
“A lot of people remember the funny ones or when something blows up.”
He prefers the spots in which he talks about the company’s different approach to selling cars. He cited their “Clearly Better Car Buying” ads and upfront pricing based on third-party sources such as Edmunds.com and Kelly Blue Book. The company uses a similar approach with trade-ins.
“We partner with Auto Trader, where the data is all out there and Auto Trader will buy a customer’s car,” he says.
Mr. Cochran lights up when he talks about the company’s expansion over the past four years, including the recent addition of the Audi brand.
“Prior to Audi, we did not have an upscale German brand,” he says.
Mr. Cochran lives in Indiana Township with his wife, Christina. They have five children ranging in age from 12 to 20. As for a fourth generation entering the business, he says: “My kids, that would be nice to have something like that happen. ... That’s a ways off at this point.”
Patricia Sheridan: psheridan@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2613, Twitter: @pasheridan.
First Published: November 18, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
