Discover how Top Gear and Shell came together in print and online to create a truly interactive campaign that increased brand awareness and usage of Shell V-Power.
The Challenge
The 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 whilst promoting Shell’s products and services to escalate their perception versus their competitors.
The Idea
The Top Gear team really wanted to get readers interacting with the Shell brand whilst also communicating the key benefits and values of Shell V-Power particularly focusing on the high quality of Shell V-Power and 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.
A bespoke Shell V-Power website on topgear.com was created featuring interactive games, a Top Gear created 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 the 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.
A staggering 88% of Top Gear’s audience have been influenced by the campaign and would consider using Shell in the future, whilst 67% of Top Gear’s audience is more likely to purchase Shell V-Power having seen the campaign
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.
The team wanted to measure how effective the campaign was at increasing brand awareness and improving the perception of Shell V-Power versus core competitors, to do this a research survey was devised that prompted users to takes part using a pop-up on the website.
The Results
- 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.
- Over 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, whilst 67% of Top Gear’s audience is more likely to purchase Shell V-Power having seen the campaign.