Valvoline Rattles Motor Oil Category With New Advertising Campaign
31 August 1998
Valvoline Rattles Motor Oil Category With $26 Million Advertising Campaign Focusing on Users Lowe & Partners Debuts
With Emotionally Driven, Image-Branded Creative
LEXINGTON, Ky., Aug. 28 -- You're born. You die. In
between, you work on cars.
We should all be so lucky, says the new $26 million Valvoline ad campaign
that features the new tag line, "You can always tell the guys who use
Valvoline." In the first campaign from its new advertising agency
Lowe & Partners/SMS (New York) Valvoline introduces creative that taps the
emotional attachment many people have with their vehicles.
"Valvoline's new campaign leverages our unique brand equity and
strengthens the brand's personality by identifying it with the people who love
and enjoy working on their cars and trucks," said Steve Kirchner, vice
president of worldwide marketing. "Historically, advertising for our category
has been focused on brand comparisons and product performance claims."
Kirchner said the new campaign does not represent a change in overall
brand strategy. "This is a continuation of our successful long-term strategy
that capitalizes on Valvoline's position as the brand most closely identified
with car experts and 'recommenders.' But it does represent an important
change in our creative.
"Our past campaigns have featured race car drivers, professional race car
mechanics and ASE-certified mechanics in 'recommender' roles for the brand,"
Kirchner said. "These campaigns appealed to people who are passionate about
their cars and enjoy working on them. Our new campaign will build more
personality into the brand by linking it directly to the passion and emotion
many people have about their cars."
"We were talking to the consumer," said Sam Mitchell, Valvoline's director
of marketing. "Now we will be talking with the consumer. We're going to
strengthen the bond between the Valvoline brand and the people, professional
or not, who love cars and have a passion for taking care of them."
Led by Lee Garfinkel, chairman and chief creative officer of
Lowe & Partners, the agency's first work for Valvoline is a package of four
national television commercials -- one 30-second and three 15-second
executions featuring people with a unique passion for their cars and trucks.
"The creative notion is to emotionally connect the passionate,
self-reliant car lover with the Valvoline brand, thereby affirming him as the
car lover he is," Garfinkel said.
One spot, featuring the typical camaraderie and mentoring of neighborhood
guys working under the hood of a car, features the copy, "You're born. You
die. In between, you work on cars. We should all be so lucky." A second
commercial, "Marriages," features a classic truck being started and driven
down a gravel road, which exemplifies loyalty and the love between the
do-it-yourselfer and his vehicle. Voiceover: "Still going. I've had
marriages that didn't last this long."
The third spot, "Shrinks," features a classic car in a garage with a man
working underneath. Voiceover: "Some people have shrinks. Some people have
their garage." The fourth spot has no Voiceover but shows a man singing the
1960s pop song, "Born To Be Wild" as he works underneath a jacked-up truck in
his garage. The jack slips, the truck falls on him and, after a few seconds'
pause, the man continues to sing and work on his truck. All four spots end
with the new tag line, superimposed.
"This new campaign is the first of a three-phase establishment of our new
brand creative position," Mitchell said. "What we like most about our new
creative is that it extends easily across all of our marketing initiatives.
We're going to integrate it into our motor sports program, sales promotion
efforts and public relations activities."
The campaign kicks off Saturday, Aug. 30 during the ABC telecast of the
"Pigskin Classic" football game featuring Purdue University and the University
of Southern California. The four commercials will be cycled on national
television programming throughout the remainder of 1998, led by ABC's "Monday
Night Football," ABC's "Valvoline at the Half" college football scoreboard
show, TNT and WTBS professional wrestling, NASCAR race telecasts and other
sports and entertainment programming.
Radio commercials begin airing in October in more than 20 markets. The
print portion of the campaign also debuts in October in Sports Illustrated,
with ads also appearing in motor sports and trade publications.
Lowe & Partners/SMS is a full-service advertising agency and marketing
communications firm that handles clients including The Coca-Cola Company,
Mercedes-Benz, Heineken USA, Inc., Sun Microsystems, Inc., Braun, Eddie Bauer,
KPMG Peat Marwick, Oral-B, Ralston Purina, Western Union, Denny's, Perdue,
Courtyard by Marriott, Long John Silver's, U.S. Virgin Islands, Valvoline and
Whitehall-Robins. Headquartered in New York City, the company opened
Lowe & Partners/SMS in San Francisco in the spring of 1997, also a
full-service advertising agency, with 60 employees and billings exceeding
$125 million. Together, Lowe & Partners/SMS employs more than 400 with total
billings of $740 million. Lowe & Partners/SMS is part of The Lowe Group's
main advertising network, Lowe & Partners Worldwide. Founded in London in
1981, Lowe is ranked 13th among agency networks and has billings in excess of
$3.8 billion and offices in 34 countries.
Valvoline motor oil is the No. 1 choice of top mechanics for use in their
own vehicles. Valvoline, a division of Ashland Inc. , has been
serving American motorists longer than any other motor oil company and is a
leading innovator and supplier of quality, high-performing automotive and
industrial products in more than 100 countries. Best known for its
lubricants, Valvoline also markets Eagle One appearance products, Zerex
antifreeze/coolant, SynPower Performance Products and Pyroil automotive
chemicals and refrigerants.
