The Brief

WHY WE NEEDED TO TRACE THE UNTRACEABLE? 2014 didn’t go down well for lubricant brands in Vietnam. To begin with a host of low cost brands entered the market. With a tough economic outlook, price became the critical factor for brand choice. Castrol, the market leader in this category, was not immune to this. This conventional marketing problem was coupled with an unconventional communication challenge: tracing an elusive target audience – the Vietnamese truck driver. To make ends meet, he has to be on the road for almost 18 hours a day for more than 20 days a month. So, how do we reach our target audience that is always unstill? This is a story of how Castrol created a new trend in the category by using mobile / tablet apps creatively for truck drivers to save media costs & connect with the audience like never before.

Creative Execution

CREATE A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE DRIVER AND THE BRAND We build one solid application that formed a channel of partnership between the user & the brand. This would be a central engagement backbone that would enable us to talk to the drivers in a way he understands best about the brand and the product. We could also localize content for the driver as he passes from one region to another. Once his details were filled in the app, content could be sent to the trucker on his feature phone. This also gives us the opportunities to completely cut wasted media spends & keep the conversation going. Using only 6.7% of the campaign budget – The Castrol Drive on App was created. To highlight how the brand appreciates & cares for both the driver & his truck. More so understands that they roll as ‘ONE’.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

THE VIETNAMESE TRUCKERS In Vietnam the legal age for driving is 18 years. But in reality, he can be anywhere between 15-55 years old. Money is hard to come by in this line of profession. He rarely watches TV, unless there is a big football tournament on. When he has time, he usually rests. His only connections to the world are fellow drivers and their feature phone. And their most prized possession is their truck. Our target audience (the trucker) has neither the time nor the inclination to be educated about Castrol’s superior formulation for a sustained amount of time.

Results

1. CASTROL IS THE ONLY BRAND TO BUILD A COMMMUNITY FOR TRUCKERS IN VIETNAM - FOR THE ELUSIVE, UNTRACEABLE DRIVER WE NOW HAVE 6,294 COMPLETE FULLY REGISTERED DRIVERS AND ADDITIONAL 12,000 PIECES OF CONTACT DATA • Refined full data points captured: Phone number, address, truck plate, truck brand, years of usage, distant coverage, oil brand – NO BRAND OR GOVERNMENT BODY HAS THIS IN VIETNAM • With 1 mobile + activation we were able to reach more than 15,000 drivers AT THE MOMENT OF TRUTH • Time spent on the app: 4 minutes - for a short attention span, 4 minutes is a lot of time! (Source: Client Data) 2. IN A COST EFFECTIVE WAY – A CPC OF 1.58 $ PER CONTACT • Saved media cost: For Castrol to air a 4 mins TV commercial ONCE on VTV 3 at prime time, it would cost nearly 7 times more than the campaign investment itself.