Going National
Hello,
Operator.
Hello,
Operator.
How do you build a nation-wide campaign that satisfies the needs of clients, stakeholders and a network of certified dealers?
Well, you make it all about their customers.
Trust me. They love that kinda thing.
Of course, it's never that simple. We pitched our concepts in early 2019, after all. But most everything else seemed fairly routine at the time. This annual campaign was Gelia's brainchild, and we'd worked on it for years.
At this point, the Retail Awareness campaign was a tradition. A year-long, yearly-refreshed program that's all about perception. From the beginning, its express intent was to make Cat dealers more approachable and Cat products more attainable.
This year though, we were asked for more.
From offers to incentives. Social media to traditional. Our MARCOM clients needed a unified messaging platform with enough legs to extend to an entire division.
For the uninitiated, Caterpillar's BCP division consists primarily of smaller machines. Its big brother, the GCI division, consists of the bigger machines you might typically think of when someone says "Cat". Our goal was to make it clear that no matter the size of your business, Caterpillar has a solution for you.
See what I mean? Perception.
target
OWNER/OPERATOR
Owns 1-3 machines
Intimidated by Cat and its dealers
Incentivized by cost
goals
DEFINING SUCCESS
Improved dealer perception
Increased market share
Demographic diversity
challenges
THE UNEXPECTED
Increased participation
New trade dress
Oh, I dunno. COVID?
CONCEPTING
In The Beginning
Up for the challenge.
Our target was the coveted, but elusive, owner/operator.
This enigmatic creature is distrusting of corporations like Caterpillar. They don't feel seen by their local Cat dealers. Sure, they have money to spend, but they believe Cat machines are out of reach.
After hundreds of hours of creative concepting and iteration that aimed to cut to the point with a notoriously prickly, but ultimately loyal customer base, we landed on a fresh direction for Caterpillar and its dealer network.
Hello, Operator was born from a desire to flip the script.
And after countless focus tests, regroups and revisions. We finally had a concept that challenged perceptions. By glorifying the customer and the work they do, we built a campaign that reflected their values
Plus, we did it all just in time for COVID.
Yeah, sorry. We set that trend.
THE CHOSEN ONE
PRODUCTION
Trust The Process
Respect the unexpected.
My first big commercial shoot.
And I sure as hell wasn't gonna go in unprepared. So we storyboarded and prevised. We contracted and cast. We scouted and scooted.
After all...
A 2-day shoot with dozens of crewmembers and a few dozen tons of iron could be a bit of a logistical challenge.
Challenge met, as far as I'm concerned.
But of course, where there are challenges, wrenches are sure to be thrown.
In the months leading to the shoot, Caterpillar unveiled an updated trade dress, and we learned all new materials would have to include it. They'd certainly be scarce in the wild, so we reached out to every dealer who'd answer our calls.
Well good on ya, Mustang Cat. You came in clutch.
So we shot, wrapped and got to work. We got some killer content, and a fresh new perspective on life.
Gelia Creative Team
Nick Jibben
CD
This Guy
SAD
Luke Neumann
SCW
Brandon Scott | Randy Marx | Josh Corn
AD
Darrien Staton | Margeaux Shore
Blake Hall | Brad Pipkins
DD
Production Partners
Jason Lindsey
DP
Nick Pflederer
PH
Talia Watkins
PROD
Mustang Cat
DLR
PAID MEDIA
Buying Time
We’re buying.
And then it happened. Wrench, consider yourself thrown.
Wouldn't ya know, our fresh campaign all about relationships and the machines behind them was met by a global pandemic and supply-chain shortage.
But call it luck, because the campaign's tone still worked — maybe even better. Sure, we had to make a few compromises to deal with the weird political climate, but the foundation remained.
New rule: No handshakes between dealer and customer.
After some last-minute tweaks, our campaign launched conceptually intact. So we bought some national placements and sent a few GBs of creative content to almost every Cat dealer in the country and let them run havoc on their local markets.
CAMPAIGN REFRESHES
Let’s Get Pivotal
What's old is new again.
Hello, Operator was built with enough substance to last a year. But remember that thing I mentioned about wrenches?
The time came to begin work on the 2020 campaign, But as global supply chains broke and WFH emails flowed like wine, we got hit with an unexpected ask... Just keep going.
The catch?
No shoot this year.
Sure, we saw solid success with the campaign. But dealers and clients (not to mention my creative team) were all growing a little tired of the same ol' thing.
The solution?
Revise. Redesign. Recontextualize.
And for another year (mostly from home), we just kept going and going. Not unlike a certain battery mascot.
PAID MEDIA
What’s In-Store
Get ‘em in the door.
Cat dealers have a certain reputation.
The primary goal for our overarching retail campaign strategy was to make dealers appear more like, well... Retailers.
Deserved or not, the perception is that Cat dealers don't care for the little guy. So our goal was to provide them not only with the creative assets to help them dispute that idea, but also the support, strategies, and logistics to help them in the follow-through.
CONQUEST
A Direct Approach
The heck’s in the mail?
Turns out, buying and maintaining machines that your livelihood depends on is kind of a big deal.
In fact, it's personal.
With that in mind, over a decade ago, Gelia developed Conquest; A direct mail campaign that enables dealers to target lapsed customers due for machine replacement. The hard part is getting them in the door. But utilizing the telematics and metrics at Caterpillar's disposal made it a bit more manageable. While straightforward incentives like real, spendable money just for taking a consultation, plus deep, stackable rebates made participation a lucrative no-brainer for dealers and customers alike.
What started as a small pilot among a handful of dealers focusing primarily on owner/operators, ballooned to a twice-yearly campaign adopted by nearly every Cat dealer in America and Canada, featuring not only BCP machines and attachments, but their big brother divisions as well.
After 50,000 consultations and 25,000 attributable sales and counting, you could say Conquest lives up to the name.
PAID + ORGANIC SOCIAL
Socially Conscious
A million times, hello.
What's a campaign without a chance to get a little weird on the gram?
Hello, Operator launched with some social-first twists on the offer component of the campaign. On both paid and organic placements, we aimed to break the fourth wall. Posts featuring machines appearing to interact with the native UI and parlance of their respective social platforms, allowed us to cut through the noise.
And over the course 2 years, we just kept going. Constantly adapting the campaign’s evolutions to social platforms.
CAMPAIGN METRICS
