Castrol

Summary

Castrol, worldwide producer and marketer of synthetic and conventional motor oil and lubricants, launched a range of plant-based metalworking fluids.

Challenge: How to raise editors’ awareness for such a niche product?

Strategy

Only sending out a press release was no option.

Pro-active calls to all relevant editors were necessary. We decided not only to pitch the product and/or the press release, but to start a dialogue about the editors’ editorial interests and needs.

Execution and creativity

Before we started calling the media, we aimed to find out which are the most important titles and how do they write and work. Therefore, we analyzed all titles that might be relevant for this product.

All calls started with a short introduction of our agency as the new German PR contact of Castrol’s industrial business area and Castrol’s products in this niche. Furthermore, we asked them what kind of information might be of interest for them referring these solutions and if they plan an editorial focus around that. Finally, and more or less by the way, we presented the new metalworking fluid, highlighting its ecological advantages over competitive products, and asked if we should send a press release about it after the call.

The feedback of the editors was great: They highly welcomed that someone asked them what they need.

After the calls, we emailed the press release with individual commentaries in the email, responding to what they asked for.

Results

This way of execution was much more time consuming then usual ways of distributing and pitching press releases, but it paid off in two ways:

• First, we got a clear idea of the editors’ interest that we could share with the customer. Based on this, we were easily able to create specific ideas and approaches for future activities.
• Second, and even more important, we gained an overwhelming number of high-quality clippings in print and online media addressing the right decision-makers: After only three months we could present eleven online reports and nine print articles, sometimes even of full-page size. And we still expect some more media to report.

  The advertising equivalent value only of the nine print articles was seven times higher as the allocated PR budget for this project.