Shell Vietnam gamified the work of truck drivers, allowing them to earn points for every kilometer driven during work, which could then be exchanged for prizes that would help make life better for the drivers and their families.
Objective
For Shell it was important to aggressively increase sales and market share of the overall portfolio in Vietnam. Rimula — Shell's truck and heavy-duty diesel fuel — would play a significant role in achieving that goal by driving preference and market share in the overall lubricants category.
Context
"Ride On Vietnam" was designed to be a new communication platform that would differentiate Shell from other competitors via emotional stories that emphasized the connection between Shell Vietnam while honoring the essence of the Vietnamese people and their greatest quality: resilience. Along with the master brand, Shell would focus on individual products to drive the resilience message. This meant creating separate messaging for Shell Rimula — targeting truck drivers who are the key users of the product. To do this, Shell for the first time activated on the Zalo platform — the largest local social platform and messaging service in Vietnam — and leveraged the share location functionality to create the "Ride On" messaging.
Target Audience
The key target consumer for Shell Rimula was truck drivers between the age of 25 and 42. They are responsible, caring family men. They are heavy users of Zalo, as it is their key platform to keep in touch with their family members while they are on the road. They feel their job is hard and tiring but allows them to give their family a better life. Resilience for them means being safe on every journey they are on and returning home once the work is done.
Creative and Media Strategy
In Vietnamese there is a saying that: "Sacrifice the father's life so that their children can have a better one." Shell aimed to turn this sacrifice and resilience into the kilometers that truck drivers travel. Every kilometer the drivers had been through is the premise of a better future for their family, especially their children. This was translated into the campaign tagline, "Ride-on Father, Ride-on Son," with the accompanying message, "Your kilometers traveled today will turn into a future journey for your kids."
Shell also saw that among the target audience, Zalo messenger was the most popular app. It was their way to keep in touch with their family. So, Shell encouraged the drivers to use the location tracking system and record the number of kilometers they had traveled. This number became a measure of their resilience and, based on the number of kilometers traveled, the drivers would receive a voucher that would help in their kids' education.
The central key idea was to reach out to truck drivers and make them use the Zalo GPS tracking system to record the kilometers they were traveling. The kilometers traveled were converted to points and the points would be accumulated on Zalo ecosystem. Based on points accumulated, rewards were distributed to truck drivers.
To drive awareness of the campaign, Shell rolled out a video through programmatic. However, to ensure precision reach and minimize waste, Shell used data signals like interests in trucks, vehicles, education, and relationship status. This ensured reach was targeted to the core target audience of Shell Rimula, thereby ensuring the messaging was relevant.
Since truck drivers would also listen to radio while driving, Shell created audio ads and streamed them on popular channels for the audience. In another effort to meet the drivers where they were, Shell used billboards on highways and sent messages on Zalo. All these messages drove traffic to the campaign and asked drivers to register for the contest.
The key enabling technology to drive this campaign was Zalo's GPS tracking technology, which could track the movement of the driver across cities. And then the Zalo server could convert them into points.
Once the GPS tracking was enabled, the Zalo app would automatically record the distance traveled by the driver whenever they went on a ride. This data was then sent to Zalo's servers, where it was processed and added to the driver's account. The driver could check their recorded kilometers on the campaign leaderboard within the Zalo app. This allowed drivers to track progress over time and see how close they were to earning rewards. This tracking process also ensured that the campaign was transparent and that drivers could easily monitor their progress in real-time.
The campaign received a spectacular response from the key target audiences. Within a month of launch, 415,065 kilometers had been clocked within the Zalo system. More than 200 drivers had shared their location and taken part in the campaign and 30 rewards had been redeemed. This campaign also allowed Shell to get authentic data on key consumers who are very hard to target otherwise.
