RaceTrac Brand Awareness Campaign

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Deciding what you want to eat can be one of life’s toughest questions. For most, that decision falls on the ambiguous “whatever.” But at RaceTrac, “whatever” reflects choice and opportunity. The variety of offerings and on-the-go food items mirrors RaceTrac’s mission to make people’s lives simpler and more enjoyable, and to be the place for whatever, whenever you want it. While brand loyalists know it, RaceTrac wanted to share their point of view and slogan with broader audiences—and they needed a strong, evergreen, media campaign to do it.

The Challenge

As a household c-store name, RaceTrac casts a wide net. Yet many consumers are not aware of RaceTrac’s commitment to being more than just a c-store. The goal of the “Whatever Gets You Going” campaign was twofold: increase brand awareness and familiarity with RaceTrac’s unique brand POV and bolster the creative platform it lives in.

The Process

Using first-party data from Hubspot email opt-ins, loyalty members, and additional audience insights, our media team began by pinpointing RaceTrac’s ideal type of consumer. “Better Than Average Joe” (or BTAJ for short) was the consumer who lived at the crossroads of convenience and quality; they wanted the variety and experience that only RaceTrac as a c-store can offer. BTAJ was the core consumer RaceTrac wanted to reach, and from that insight, we were able to create a wide range of lookalike audiences.

Knowing that BTAJs (and similar demographics) used more than just mobile, we developed a diverse media plan, serving ads on a variety of platforms like YouTube, Samba, Vistar, and GroundTruth to increase impressions. We also used commute apps like Waze to assist in digital out-of-home planning. This ensured that our audiences would see our ads numerous times throughout the day, and added to the story of RaceTrac being there for whatever and whenever you needed to refresh yourself.

Using first-party data from Hubspot email opt-ins, loyalty members, and additional audience insights, our media team began by pinpointing RaceTrac’s ideal type of consumer.

With our strategy ready, we just needed creative. The final ads were built by RaceTrac’s creative partner R/GA, while we supplied specs to ensure proper formatting and usability.

The Results

The diverse media plan for this evergreen campaign has paid off in a major way. Since launch, we have created millions of impressions across our digital channels, including a high video completion rate on YouTube and Facebook. Plus, we generated an estimated 16.4 percent ad recall lift rate amongst consumers (that just keeps climbing).

The natural flexibility of platform and messaging has also created strong, valuable tests for RaceTrac’s many desired products and messages within their audience. Since this was built as an evergreen campaign, we have been able to rotate in different creative every quarter to ensure ad freshness and mix up our media to reduce ad fatigue.

When you’re going places on the road, choose RaceTrac. If you want to go places on digital, choose Vert.