SINGAPORE Castrol is launching a global brand campaign to drive sales and bolster the image of its Magnatec car engine oil.
Devised by Ogilvy & Mather Singapore, the campaign will break in Asia-Pacific early next year, and has already rolled out in Poland, with Turkey, Russia, the UK, Germany, Iran, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina to follow.
TV, digital, point-of-sale and print executions will run, with different versions for Western and Asian audiences.
The ads aim to tell the Magnatec story without the technical jargon typical of the category. "Consumers aren't interested in the nitty-gritty of changing oil. We needed to explain how Magnatec protects engines in terms that are easy to understand,"said Yanti Harris, regional account director, Ogilvy.
The creative idea centres on the reassurance that 'Intelligent molecules' within Magnatec - a synthetic lubricant - 'know' where to go to protect an engine. The campaign is also part of a plan to rationalise the Castrol product range globally, and align it within a car lubricant family that will include only Castrol Edge and Castrol GTX.
Castrol's key global competitors include Shell, Total and Mobil, although the brand is looking to fend off increasing local competition, particularly in China and oil-rich Russia.
The company controls around 12 per cent of Asia's consumer lubricant oil market, ranging from four per cent share in Korea to 30 per cent in Malaysia.
Ogilvy has held the Castrol account since 1999, when the agency won the account following the acquisition of Castrol by BP.
