Have you experienced that feeling of contentment when your car’s petrol needle reaches the mark “full”? But do you know how many car petrol tanks can be filled up with 2,000 litres of petrol? This was the question posed for almost two weeks by Latvia Statoil which, in collaboration with DDB, created a non-traditional campaign that culminated on 17 March when 2,000 litres of free petrol were poured into the petrol tanks of cars at one of Statoil’s stations.

Car drivers were encouraged to take part in the promotion by Pauls Timrots, presenter of the car show “Zebra” with the following advertising video, but without revealing the place where the campaign would take place. Five days before the event, directions were issued on social networks about which Statoil station this could be - one instruction a day was issued. On the campaign homepage: www.parpilnambakam.lv, which was visited by about 7,000 one-time users, anybody could predict how long it would take to fill the tank of a car with 2,000 litres of petrol. The prize on offer for guessing correctly was a karting drive. A total of 1,123 predictions were made. Parallel to this, SWH organised its own prediction competition in which more than 2,000 listeners took part.

On the morning of 17 March, the campaign location: Ādažu Statoil DUS was announced live on Radio SWH. Given that Ādažu Statoil is one of Statoil’s newest stations, the campaign’s secondary objectives were to inform drivers about its existence and boost its number of customers. But we were still surprised to discover that, after following our directions, the first campaign participant had already arrived at the station at midnight. The campaign ended with 37 full tanks, while a total of 65 car drivers participated in the campaign. This is a successful example of how a self-sufficient message can be used to reach an audience without the help of traditional media buying – in total, the campaign video was viewed 12,000 times and parpilnambakam.lv became a hot topic on Twitter and Facebook.

Latvia Statoil’s Marketing Manager, Jana Rubīna was pleased with the successfully organized campaign: “This was a game of chance – some people were luckier than others. But we’ve reached our goal, because the response was great. I’m very grateful to DDB, because throughout the campaign, all its components looked just like they did in the first sketches for the campaign. ”