Creating Campaigns That Resonate with Both Dealers and Customers
A large chunk of the work my team and I did for CASE Construction Equipment was creating integrated campaigns of all kinds, including machine-focused, trade shows, promotional, segment-specific, and seasonal. I concepted, developed, art directed, and oversaw many campaigns over the years, and I’m proud to have developed the position and line for one of CASE’s longest running and most successful campaigns: Trade Up.
A Call to Up Your Game
CASE has a strong heavy equipment lineup, and the client wanted to launch an integrated campaign to build awareness and ultimately encourage machine demos or walkarounds.
The campaign needed to:
Work nationally and regionally
Be CASE corporate and dealer-facing
Be brand-building and product-specific
Work in a variety of mediums, including print, digital, email, social.
I developed several ideas but thought the framing of Trade Up was strongest because it:
Was an actionable command
Positioned CASE as a superior choice without actually saying it
Worked on many levels (e.g., machine, dealer, etc.)
Encouraged demos and was a natural extension for machine trade-ins
Potentially created a desire that equipment owners may not have realized existed
When we presented Trade Up (along with three other concepts my team created), I originally envisioned a simple but glossy automotive feel. To help the client envision how we could adapt existing imagery to achieve this look, I art directed our retoucher to create a machine example.
The client chose to proceed with Trade Up but preferred the visual imagery from another teammates’s concept. While I didn’t design this particular campaign, I oversaw its production and proposed ideas to extend the campaign to CASE’s light equipment lineup, as well as Spanish translation in certain markets.
Aligning the Stars for Regional Success
When CASE set a goal to increase market share with regional targeting as one way to achieve it, I saw an opportunity help the brand marketing managers (BMMs) — many of whom have a stronger background in engineering than marketing. Often times, the BMMs would drop insightful bits on our calls and in meetings. This intel, coupled with my own knowledge of industry associations, trade shows, regional markets, seasons, and of course, the equipment, led to an idea of grouping and converting these insights into regional opportunities to propose to dealers.
To make the idea feel manageable, I put together several examples of Venn diagrams showing three insights coming together to create an opportunity. The opportunities varied from goals of moving access inventory to helping underperforming dealers to targeting conquest customers.
One BMM was quick to mention that one of his dealers fit the trio scenario: a high-performing dealer with excess inventory (excavators) in a hot market. Since the inventory was a product line featured in the Trade Up campaign, it was a natural fit to customize that campaign for the dealer.
The campaign ran two months and consisted of:
Print and digital ads
E-blasts sent to the dealer’s full list, then a second e-blast to those that didn’t open the first
Social media posts
A CASE dealer-branded landing page to collect leads
In the first month, the dealer sold 8 of the 12 machines and by the end of the second month sold the remaining 4.
The dealer was so pleased, they planned to run a similar campaign the following quarter with a machine from their light lineup.
“Immediate impact. People outside the industry were noticing our marketing and offer. One unit conversion will cover the cost of marketing. Total excavator sales for June were $1.4M. $390K is directly attributable to digital marketing at 6% GM.
Thanks for helping us.”
— Jim Hills, Co-founder and President
Hills Machinery Company, LLC.
A Few of My Favorite Things
I would be remiss if I did not include a few campaign concepts that I enjoyed working on.
For the first concept (the launch of new machine enhancements), it started with an interesting visual reference a teammate found. Our copywriter had a line on a different concept that I thought would pair perfectly with this idea and would also tout one of the main enhancements. I volunteered to take on this concept, found machine and phone imagery I thought would work together, and art directed our retoucher to combine them. The result was a refreshing visual departure for CASE. This concept was ultimately produced and received positive feedback from CASE dealers.
For the second concept (the launch of a new product line), the team developed several approaches, and I concepted, designed, and wrote the copy for the two below. The product line was the C Series, and CASE’s target audience was (and still is) the owner/operator — a type of person who that tends to relish in being outdoors and independent. That said, I wanted one direction to play upon the idea of the atypical “C-suite.” The other focused more on the play between the unexpected power of these mini excavators. These ideas both hit the cutting room floor, but they were no less fun to work on.
