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24 Oct 2011
The Challenge The BBC Worldwide advertising team were challenged to create a campaign for Shell that would raise awareness of Shell V-Power and Shell V-Power Diesel.
The brief was for an interactive cross-media campaign that would engage car enthusiasts while promoting Shell’s products and services above their competitors.
The Idea
A key aim of the campaign was to get readers interacting with the Shell brand, while also communicating the key benefits and values of Shell V-Power - particularly the improved performance that it delivers.
In order to achieve this, the creative team decided that a combination of magazine advertorials, reader events and a website would be the best approach.
The team created a Shell V-Power section on topgear.com, featuring interactive games, video and a competition to find Britain’s Best Driver. A series of DPS advertorials featuring high profile professional drivers from Shell’s Motorsport team also featured in Top Gear magazine.
Not only did this raise awareness of Shell’s involvement in motorsports, but it also helped to drive traffic to the website, where users could enter a competition to win an all expenses VIP trip to the Melbourne Formula 1 as guests of Shell and Ferrari.
Details of the competition and website also featured in Top Gear’s bi-weekly e-newsletter to 135,000 users, as well as a campaign of banners, skyscrapers and MPU’s on topgear.com directing users to the Shell V-Power website.
The Execution
The magazine advertorials featured stunning photography and included interviews with professional drivers from Shell’s motorsport team (Kimi Raikkone, Troy Bayliss, Tom Kristensen and Casey Stoner).
The imagery worked well to grab readers’ attention and drive people to the website, where they could enter the competition and read the interviews in full.
The competition on the website to find Britain’s Best Driver really helped to reinforce Shell V-Power’s premium performance message. It featured 10 driving games, encouraging users to engage with the Shell brand.
The competition consisted of three stages; firstly a timed motoring quiz on the website, with the top sixteen entrants progressing to stage two, a day karting at Drayton Milton Keynes. The top three drivers then faced the final contest, tests of skill and precision driving in the Top Gear Live arena at the MPH Birmingham. The winner of the competition featured on the website with video coverage of the grand final at MPH Birmingham, and went onto become the Brand Ambassador for Shell V Power. Insight Supporting the Campaign BBC Worldwide wanted to measure how effective the campaign was at increasing brand awareness and
improving the perception of Shell V-Power versus its competitors, so to do this it devised a research survey and prompted users to complete it using a pop-up on the site.
The Results
Case Study: Shell V-Power & TopGear.com Increasing Brand Awareness
The Challenge The BBC Worldwide advertising team were challenged to create a campaign for Shell that would raise awareness of Shell V-Power and Shell V-Power Diesel.The brief was for an interactive cross-media campaign that would engage car enthusiasts while promoting Shell’s products and services above their competitors.
The Idea
A key aim of the campaign was to get readers interacting with the Shell brand, while also communicating the key benefits and values of Shell V-Power - particularly the improved performance that it delivers.
In order to achieve this, the creative team decided that a combination of magazine advertorials, reader events and a website would be the best approach.
The team created a Shell V-Power section on topgear.com, featuring interactive games, video and a competition to find Britain’s Best Driver. A series of DPS advertorials featuring high profile professional drivers from Shell’s Motorsport team also featured in Top Gear magazine.
Not only did this raise awareness of Shell’s involvement in motorsports, but it also helped to drive traffic to the website, where users could enter a competition to win an all expenses VIP trip to the Melbourne Formula 1 as guests of Shell and Ferrari.
Details of the competition and website also featured in Top Gear’s bi-weekly e-newsletter to 135,000 users, as well as a campaign of banners, skyscrapers and MPU’s on topgear.com directing users to the Shell V-Power website.
"We really wanted to get readers interacting with the Shell brand whist also communicating the key benefits and values of Shell V-Power and improved performance that it delivers."Shell Digital Planner/Buyer Will Smith
The magazine advertorials featured stunning photography and included interviews with professional drivers from Shell’s motorsport team (Kimi Raikkone, Troy Bayliss, Tom Kristensen and Casey Stoner).
The imagery worked well to grab readers’ attention and drive people to the website, where they could enter the competition and read the interviews in full.
The competition on the website to find Britain’s Best Driver really helped to reinforce Shell V-Power’s premium performance message. It featured 10 driving games, encouraging users to engage with the Shell brand.
The competition consisted of three stages; firstly a timed motoring quiz on the website, with the top sixteen entrants progressing to stage two, a day karting at Drayton Milton Keynes. The top three drivers then faced the final contest, tests of skill and precision driving in the Top Gear Live arena at the MPH Birmingham. The winner of the competition featured on the website with video coverage of the grand final at MPH Birmingham, and went onto become the Brand Ambassador for Shell V Power. Insight Supporting the Campaign BBC Worldwide wanted to measure how effective the campaign was at increasing brand awareness and
improving the perception of Shell V-Power versus its competitors, so to do this it devised a research survey and prompted users to complete it using a pop-up on the site.
The Results
- Using a combination of magazine advertorials and a website, the campaign raised awareness of Shell V-Power and proved to be a hit with the Top Gear audience.
- The advertorials successfully engaged readers with a 74% recall rate, equating to 1.3 million readers each issue.
- They were also extremely effective at driving readers to the website, with 86% of users stating that they went to the site because of the magazine advertorials.
- More than 22,000 users interacted with the website, generating over 98,000 page impressions with 1 in 3 visitors entering the Britain’s Best Driver competition.
- The campaign was a powerful messaging tool for Shell - increasing brand awareness, brand perception and propensity to purchase.
- A staggering 88% of Top Gear’s audience have been influenced by the campaign and would consider using Shell in the future, while 67% of Top Gear's audience are more likely to purchase Shell V-Power having seen the campaign.
