Goal
Getting your first car was once an important, liberating milestone for teens, but now, just 54% bother to get their driver鈥檚 licenses by age 18, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Today, members of the millennial and Gen Z generations express themselves through social media feeds and smartphones, not by the make and model of their rides. As a result, they鈥檙e less inclined to buy, let alone work on, cars. Motor oil brand Pennzoil, headquartered in Elk Grove Village, Ill., and owned by Shell Oil Co., recognized a need to boost relevance among a demographic that鈥檚 more into iTunes than tune-ups. 鈥淲e鈥檙e an oil brand, and it鈥檚 a fairly low involvement category from a broad consumer perspective,鈥 says Doug Kooyman, global brand director at Pennzoil. 鈥淲e鈥檙e striving to change brand perception and drive brand preference in a very unique category.鈥
Action
Pennzoil, along with its New York-based agency of record MediaCom, partnered with Los Angeles-based music media and events company Live Nation Inc. to create a campaign called Backseat Pass, with the tagline 鈥淢otor oil reimagined.鈥 The campaign, which included video, Web and experiential marketing elements, tapped recording artists like OK Go, Teagan and Sarah, Godsmack and Delta Spirit to create unique versions of their own hit songs and were filmed performing and recording in the back of a Pennzoil-branded Durango that drove around Los Angeles over the past year. The performances were filmed and lived on a Pennzoil-branded microsite, PennzoilBackseatPass.com, which also promoted a campaign sweepstakes in which one fan won a flight and VIP tickets to a Live Nation festival of their choice.
鈥淧ennzoil is like most brands: looking at younger consumers, wanting to expand their audience and find new drivers,鈥 says Jeremy Levine, senior vice president of digital sales at Live Nation. 鈥淸The campaign] is less about the old school gear head and more about Joe Smith, who drives to work every day and wants to be as efficient as possible.鈥
Levine says they also wanted to make sure they hit the broadest base of 鈥測ounger鈥 consumers as possible, so the team was very thoughtful about the types of musicians featured. 鈥淲e wanted to have a wide enough appeal that you could be 17 or 40 and think it was interesting content.鈥
The campaign ran from October 2014 through October 2015, and coincided with the release of Pennzoil鈥檚 Platinum with PurePlus Technology motor oil. The campaign鈥檚 microsite featured videos of the performances, a photo gallery, and product information on the Platinum motor oil. Backseat Pass was created through Live Nation鈥檚 content marketing arm, and was promoted through a mostly digital ad placement strategy, including social media mentions and ad buys, banner ads on Live Nation鈥檚 website, and e-mail promotions.
Pennzoil has been building a music-based marketing strategy for years, featuring country music star Tim McGraw as a brand ambassador. Kooyman says that while Pennzoil does do marketing in the motorsports space, as most of its competitors do, he sees music-based marketing as an opportunity to reach young, new consumers. 鈥淲e wanted to play in a space that was an open territory. Data shows that our consumers are listening to a lot of music and going to concerts, so why not capitalize on that in a relevant way for the brand?鈥
Results
Between July and September 2015, the campaign garnered more than 90 million total impressions across all social media, more than 180,000 microsite impressions, more than a million views of the videos to date, and nearly 80,000 sweepstakes entries. The videos averaged a 27% action rate, meaning viewers clicked through to the campaign microsite or to a Live Nation site after viewing, which exceeded his team鈥檚 20% benchmark goal, according to Kooyman.
鈥淔rom a brand perception standpoint, aligning Pennzoil in this way and seeing how it resonated from a consumer and a retailer perspective, this was something that was building awareness for the Pennzoil brand name in the motor oil space,鈥 Levine says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e working with Pennzoil to see where we can take music marketing from here.鈥
The campaign is a success thanks to the obvious connection between cars and music, says Dominic Sandifer, president of ad agency and content production firm GreenLight Media & Marketing, where he鈥檚 worked on experiential and video projects for clients including Under Armour and Verizon. 鈥淚 would look at Pennzoil in the automotive category, in general, rather than just motor oil because people who are car enthusiasts exist in every genre, and that goes for entertainers like musicians,鈥 Sandifer says. 鈥淧ennzoil is pivoting off of the relationship they have with Tim McGraw and trying to get a different audience to think about their brand and products. It鈥檚 an easy jump. It鈥檚 smart that Pennzoil is sticking with the music-focused marketing and has identified the fact that there鈥檚 an audience that loves music and is interested in cars. They鈥檝e found a unique way to use music as a vehicle to help reach that audience with their message.鈥
For more on music in marketing, check out 鈥淢usic: The Unsung Hero of Advertising鈥 from the October 2015 issue of Marketing News at 础惭础.辞谤驳/惭补谤办别迟颈苍驳狈别飞蝉鈥.
