Shell Rimula & Shell Rotella had already begun to step away from the category ‘norm’ with its ‘hard work’ positioning, which recognized the hard work that truckers do and claimed we were ‘the engine oil that works as hard as you do’.

However, recognizing hard work was only the beginning. To create a powerful connection with our audience and interrupt buying habits, we needed to acknowledge ‘why’ they worked hard. With each load delivered, truckers get closer to the ‘real destinations’ that drive them to succeed each day, as do mechanics & business owners.

That’s why we created ‘Real Destinations’, a campaign celebrating the motivations driving truckers and highlighting how we can help them get there. Our campaign celebrated the trucker as a person, building a deeper relationship and speaking about product benefits in terms of not just what they do day to day, but what they contribute to in wider life.

Deployed or deploying across 17 markets globally, ‘Real Destinations’ creates a worldwide conversation about truckers. To do this, we first used overarching ‘real destinations’ in an anthemic piece of online video content, stating our point of view and fostering an emotional connection to inspire our audience.

Supporting this hero content was a website, PR activity and local market radio partnerships, which drove truckers to share their motivations with the brand and the trucking community, as they were plying their trade. We sourced and acted upon trucker’s ‘Real Destinations’ in China & Russia, creating episodic content of their stories distributed online.

We used OOH, print & trade road shows to inform our audience how our oil’s benefits impact their life goals, on their terms. Finally, at POS everything came together with promotions that rewarded truckers and incrementally helped them reach their day to day goals and ‘Real Destinations’.

“Real Destinations” has been launched in China & Russia with the US & other markets following across 2016. In launch markets, the campaign has shown a scale and participation from consumers that is atypical for the HDEO sector.

In Russia, display and mobile advertising reached over 1.8m unique users, driving 18,267 visits to our Russian promotional page. Our Russian radio activity was regarded as the most innovative seen by the market in years, with the length of the program doubled from 15 to 30 minutes.

In China, ATL reached over 1.9m unique users, resulting in 495k active engagements and 50k stored leads; increasing unaided advertising awareness by 13% (previously 17%) and subsequently increasing brand preference from 38% to 44%.

These increases in preference drove a 17% increase in sales volume during the campaign period (Sept. to December 2015) versus the 2015 non-campaign period, 11% higher than the overall 2015 average.