Crafting an effective industry awareness campaign takes powerful strategy, careful execution and patience. Here is a look at what other industries may take away from the National Biodiesel Board's (NBB) very successful nationwide Advanced Biofuel Initiative.

1. Lessons From A National Industry
Awareness Campaign
by Frances Reimers
Senior Account Executive White Paper
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2. If you are not already engaged in an awareness campaign
for your industry, you’re probably at least thinking about one.
Industries ranging from nuclear power to pistachio nuts have
been promoted through professional, sustained, nationwide
advertising campaigns. Some of the resulting slogans –
notoriously, “got milk?” and “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” have
even entered the popular lexicon.
Not all industry awareness campaigns have succeeded,
however. Competition for the attention of key audiences is
intense. Breaking through requires a powerful strategy, great
execution, and patience. For every “got milk?” there are many
other campaigns that have been forgotten or abandoned along
the way.
In 2011 the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) – the national
membership association for those who produce an alternative
fuel for diesel engines from soybean oil and other renewable
sources – launched its Advanced Biofuel Initiative, or ABI, a
national educational campaign designed to increase awareness
and promote the use of biodiesel. Here are five things other
industries can learn from the NBB’s campaign – modest in size
but highly effective in meeting its industry’s goals.
1. Go All In.
There are no two ways about it. If you want your campaign
to be seen, you are going to have to pay for advertising; and
advertising is expensive. Getting the placements you want at
the times you want them is going to come at a price. An industry
campaign of any size is going to require an annual investment of
several million dollars in media. Any less is not going to deliver
your message with sufficient reach and frequency to “move the
needle” in awareness. Your industry must be prepared to make
a commitment of that size.
The reason for this is simple – few people will take notice of
or remember an ad until they have seen it several times. An
industry maxim is “seven times in seven ways” – meaning that
a consumer must receive information many times over, and in
several different forms, before action is likely to result.
The good news is that most industry awareness campaigns are
a form of cooperative advertising, through which multiple
members of the industry pool their resources so that the
burden does not fall too heavily on any one company. Various
mechanisms have been established for this. The recreation
vehicle industry’s “Go RVing” campaign is primarily supported
by an assessment upon new units built by Recreation Vehicle
Industry Association members, while the “REALTOR®” campaign
depends on an annual special assessment paid by all members
of the National Association of Realtors.
The Advanced Biofuel Initiative was funded in large part through
a collaborative of national and state soybean and canola
checkoff programs, the National Soybean Checkoff program, an
assessment collected when soybeans are sold. Per bean, the
cost is low; in aggregate there is enough to provide the NBB with
a pot large enough to support a respectable national ad buy.
2. Do Your Research.
Market research has its limitations – it has been pointed out
that focus groups gave us “New Coke.” But when a messaging
campaign really needs to hit home, it can be well worth the effort
to find out where your audience is living.
The “got milk?” campaign was born of market research. Milk
producers had poured millions into commodity advertising
stressing that milk was “good for you,” but the results were poor.
The reason, revealed by research, is that well more than 90% of
consumers already believed milk was healthy. What they were
forgetting was how good milk can be with peanut butter, cookies,
and other essentials.
The NBB also conducted market research before implementing
the Advanced Biofuel Initiative. The findings had a dramatic
impact upon the direction and content of the advertising that
followed. Consumers and influencers alike, the research showed,
thought biodiesel was a fine idea. They just didn’t believe it
was real. It would be crucial for the awareness messaging to
demonstrate that biodiesel was a real, practical fuel that was
already displacing more than a billion gallons of fossil fuel
every year. The resulting campaign was simplified to place
less emphasis on enumerating the benefits of biodiesel and
much more on the fact that biodiesel is “here, now.” The theme
continues into the third year of the campaign.
3. Focus.
Effective ad campaigns answer two basic questions very clearly:
#1, who are we talking to? and #2, what do we want them to
do? The more specific and limited the answers in each case, the
more effective a campaign at any level of spending can be.
This can be a huge challenge in a cooperative advertising
campaign, where multiple funders may have multiple ideas about
what audiences must be reached and what messages must
be delivered. But it pays to be a little ruthless about targeting.
Lessons From A National Industry Awareness Campaign
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3. The more funds you can concentrate upon those people who
really matter, the more likely you will reach them with sufficient
frequency to make a difference in their attitude. The cleaner your
message, the more likely that it will get through.
The NBB has been particularly clear about its focus for the
Advanced Biofuel Initiative. From the beginning, the campaign
was targeted at “affluent news seekers in the Mid-Atlantic” –
those judged by ABI stakeholders to be the most influential,
or conversely the most detrimental, to industry goals to make
biodiesel an ever-more-important contributor to the country’s
energy supply and energy security. Clear targeting enables the
NBB to concentrate on television, radio, and print outlets that are
most likely to attract this audience. A finite ad budget goes further
because it can be devoted to programs like Face the Nation and
Meet the Press and to publications like Politico and The Hill,
rather than to more general – and expensive – venues.
4. Call Them to Action.
As an outcome, “awareness” is not specific enough, even for an
awareness campaign. A target audience can become aware of
something, and still fail to take action or change behavior as a
result. A truly effective campaign will motivate the target audience
to do – or stop doing – something.
The Advanced Biofuel Initiative was designed to educate
its audience and to secure biodiesel’s role as a part of the
country’s long-term energy picture. But the ABI campaign
needed a more immediate call to action. Television, radio, print,
and online ads urge policymakers and consumers to “Visit
AmericasAdvancedBiofuel.org to learn more.” There, they can
explore information about biodiesel in much greater detail than
could be included in any advertisement.
5. Measure Your Results.
It is notoriously difficult to measure the impact of any advertising
campaign. Traditionally, advertisers have relied on “impressions,”
the number of people who should have been exposed to the
campaign in any particular medium. Impressions, of course, do
not necessarily translate to any measurable increase in sales or
positive perceptions. Too many other factors are at work. Other
types of direct measurement, such as telephone surveys, can in
some cases cost more than the advertising they are designed to
measure.
Still, the funders of an industry awareness campaign deserve
and will likely demand to know whether their money is going to
good use. Luckily, the advent of digital advertising has made it
easier to track consumer behavior. Individual landing pages or
special phone numbers can be set up and aligned with different
ads, so that it is possible to tell which media investments are
driving the most visits to the microsite or call center. The National
Biodiesel Board was able to demonstrate a 9% increase in
awareness of biodiesel among key audience members as a
result of the Advanced Biofuel Initiative’s inaugural year.
Finally and above all, it’s important to remember that your
campaign will be facing heavy competition for the attention of
your key audience members. Your industry awareness spots
or ads will be fighting with those of many other industries – not
to mention the best commercial advertising for products and
services – to make an impact. Yours will have to stand out, and
be as good as or better than the best Madison Avenue has to
offer.
For that reason, it does not pay to scrimp. You need outstanding
creative concepts, punchy copy, unique photography, edgy
graphic design, and superior film production if your campaign
is going to get noticed. You don’t want to spend the tens of
thousands it takes to secure favorable media placements and
then run ho-hum or amateurish material.
PCI has been privileged to conduct market research, produce
the television, print, and digital assets for all three years of the
Advanced Biofuel Initiative, and to design the microsite for 2012
and 2013 as well. In the first year, streets in Dallas were shut
down to film scenes with city fire trucks, school buses, and city
vehicles operating on biodiesel blends. In 2012 an automotive-
style ad showed a biodiesel-powered vehicle that set the world
land speed record for pickup trucks traversing a raceway,
in order to demonstrate the high performance possible with
biodiesel. The 2013 ABI campaign introduces an ominous world
without choices, to suggest that dependence upon petroleum as
the only source of transportation fuel makes America vulnerable.
The commercial spot, which will debut on major networks in
June 2013, was filmed on location in Baltimore and Washington,
DC. In each year, the National Biodiesel Board has received
distinctive, creative advertising that has been able to make
a measurable difference in the perceptions of its key target
audience.
Not every industry needs or can fund an industry awareness
campaign. Those who have done them right – including the dairy,
realty, recreation vehicle, and biodiesel industries – have found
them to be of lasting benefit.
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Lessons From A National Industry Awareness Campaign(Cont’d)