Sunoco Ultra 94
David, Goliath, racing fuel, and environmentalism...on a budget
David, Goliath, racing fuel, and environmentalism...on a budget
Sunoco came to us with an interesting problem.
"Our Ultra 94 is the highest octane fuel you'll find. It's racing grade. It's also the cleanest fuel around, with 35% ethanol. People don't get that you can be clean, and powerful. We don't have Chevron budgets. In fact, all we can afford is pump toppers."
Noodling the problem for a while, we came to two conclusions which we presented to the client.
"Turn the power / clean idiosyncrasy into the campaign theme. Green and mean, together for the first time. Good tension, with all the juxtaposition and such. And as for the pump topper, let's create a screaming yellow and blue ad template, which will allow us to post new ads at ridiculously low cost. And we'll make it look like a license plate, because it's so obvious and yet no other major oil has thought of it, and therefore it will turn Chevron inside out with envy."
Our campaign began with seven headlines, which morphed into seven every month, which (at last count) became several hundred. The dilemma of providing a constant flow of great headlines turned into a great crowdsourcing opportunity - we asked all Sunoco staffers to submit lines, and suggest new media for our license plates (truck sides and lapel name tags, for example). Some of the staff lines even made it on our car show VW, which sported over 150 plates. That, of course, became another element of our campaign - guess the number of plates, and you get to drive the VW to the next car show.
One final note - we distance tested the ads - you could read them from the Chevron pumps across the street. The big oils hated it.
"Our Ultra 94 is the highest octane fuel you'll find. It's racing grade. It's also the cleanest fuel around, with 35% ethanol. People don't get that you can be clean, and powerful. We don't have Chevron budgets. In fact, all we can afford is pump toppers."
Noodling the problem for a while, we came to two conclusions which we presented to the client.
"Turn the power / clean idiosyncrasy into the campaign theme. Green and mean, together for the first time. Good tension, with all the juxtaposition and such. And as for the pump topper, let's create a screaming yellow and blue ad template, which will allow us to post new ads at ridiculously low cost. And we'll make it look like a license plate, because it's so obvious and yet no other major oil has thought of it, and therefore it will turn Chevron inside out with envy."
Our campaign began with seven headlines, which morphed into seven every month, which (at last count) became several hundred. The dilemma of providing a constant flow of great headlines turned into a great crowdsourcing opportunity - we asked all Sunoco staffers to submit lines, and suggest new media for our license plates (truck sides and lapel name tags, for example). Some of the staff lines even made it on our car show VW, which sported over 150 plates. That, of course, became another element of our campaign - guess the number of plates, and you get to drive the VW to the next car show.
One final note - we distance tested the ads - you could read them from the Chevron pumps across the street. The big oils hated it.
