Quality You Can Ignore

ZIC Motor Oil

Full quart press

SK is among the world’s largest makers of base engine oils and lubricants. Their products are at the core of almost every engine oil brand we know. They came to us — through our relationships in the automotive industry — to do a U.S. launch of their consumer facing brand, ZIC. Our directive was to identify key audiences and strategize a point-of-purchase campaign for the brand launch.

Millenials and cars — it's complicated.

As you might imagine, research showed strong loyalty to iconic American oil brands. Moving car enthusiasts into new brands after generations of promotion, celebrity endorsements, racing stars, and logo recognition would be next to impossible. We believed that our way into the market was through the next generation of customers. The only problem — most of them really didn’t care much about cars.

That insight gave birth to our strategy. We embraced the insignificance of the category, and focused on the fact that product quality could allow buyers to never think about engine oil. We designed a campaign of millennial thought bubbles showing a series of personalities and interests — each highlighting the absence of motor oil.

It was different in every way. No race car drivers. No greasy gear heads. Not even a garage. We found a sliver of the market to understand and we began to create a bond with them at the shelf — the only moment that they think about oil.

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Key takeaways

Market research and launch strategy
Campaign creative and messaging
Point-of-purchase analysis and media planning

What we did

Campaign concepting and copywriting
Custom photography and photo illustration
Design, Art Direction, Layout
Logotype design

Key takeaways

What we did

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