Freightliner Trucks
Freightliner is more of a relationship story than a case study. As the industry’s leading brand, they didn’t do a lot of long campaigns or product launches with specific goals. Work generally consisted of maintenance, covering everything from print to digital to web. But every so often, a challenge would come up and we would develop an approach to address it. These are a few of my favorites in that time.
Advantage
Freightliner always had an advantage when it came to fuel efficiency, but the gap was closing. They needed to make buyers aware of their edge when it came to safety, technology and connectivity. I lead the team to develop this campaign that showed how Freightliner’s work gave fleets the advantages that lead to greater profit. The campaign had just started going with the first two print and digital executions with video pre-roll when Covid-19 hit. Production was stopped and never picked up again. Even in an abbreviated run, it won an Ad Impact Award from industry pubs and was widely praised internally at DTNA.
Success Lives
Freightliner wanted to be known for more than efficiency. It wanted to be know for all of its industry-leading advancements. And they still loved a print ad. The team developed this campaign and I threw in with a little writing as well.
Just a Freightliner
If you haunt the trade shows and socials of the trucking industry, you hear a lot of people talking down the advantages of Freightliner, often with the dismissive “It’s just a Freightliner.” That happens when you’re the leader. The team and I created this campaign to challenge that phrase. To tell the category we heard what they’re saying and we’re taking ownership of it. We even came up a nice spec video to make the case. It was all oh-so-close to being produced, but the word “negative” was mentioned. We were unable to overcome that, but it doesn’t change the strength of the idea and strategy.
Brand Guidelines
With a number of partners coming in to work on the business and doing their own thing, the brand was getting fractured. I convinced them we needed to update the guidelines and create a clear path for the future so that everyone, both Freightliner employees and partners, could follow it.
#FTLFTW
There aren’t any participation trophies in business. And Freightliner’s advantages can make it seem almost unfair. Almost. We created this campaign using language you usually don’t find in business, at least spoken out loud, encouraging people to feel okay with getting that leg up. Making the case that the reason to own Freightliner is for the win.
Freightliner CNG
While electric trucks were in development, Freightliner made a push with compressed natural gas. It offered reduced emissions for lower cost without a reduction in power. A truck in every measure. The biggest difference was the fuel cell backpack on the truck. And rather than hide it, we had a few fun ideas to wrap the cell for trade shows that made the profitability point.
ACT Expo
Freightliner was introducing a lot of its new technology – including its new electric-powered truck, the eCascadia – at one of the industry’s biggest trade shows. These were some fun ads we made last minute for the show program.
