BP has made its biggest marketing investment in its Wild Bean Cafe brand in the UK, challenging what it says are “long-held assumptions” that forecourt coffee and food is low quality, by reframing the brand as “one of life’s pleasant surprises”.
The campaign, which leads on coffee, aims at provoking customers to give Wild Bean Cafe a try – either from the growing number of micro mart self-service units in dealer sites, or the serve-over counters which have been in its company-owned sites for nearly 25 years.
BP says that the out of home creative, developed by TBWA/MCR and running until early December, embraces Wild Bean Cafe’s roots as a petrol station café, “while tackling negative perceptions around quality head-on”.
It adds that despite Wild Bean Cafe serving up freshly prepared coffee and high-quality food for decades, many drivers pass it by, “unaware of what they’re missing”.
One written advert in the campaign exclaims: “Delicious milky lattes, from a fuel station. Holy cow.” And the audio advert makes humorous parallels between the unexpected nature of being asked to record a voice over “next to a mountain waterfall… on horseback… strumming a harp”, to the unexpected high-quality coffee at a fuel station cafe.
Rob Quartermain, brand and communications manager UK at BP, says: “With this new campaign we want to be saying to people: take another look, we’re far better than you might think. We didn’t want to shy away from people’s preconceptions of us and this helped us be hyper-focussed on our goal, which is to jolt people into giving Wild Bean Cafe a second look. We wanted to take a provocative attitude – one that isn’t afraid to be authentic, witty and self-deprecating.”
Becci Nadin, deputy creative director at TBWA\MCR, adds: “Life is great when it surprises you, so our creative idea centres on how your trip to a Wild Bean Cafe is one of these unexpected moments of joy. By tackling the age-old barrier that petrol-station food and drink is low quality, we could be tongue-in-cheek while still honouring Wild Bean Cafe’s forecourt roots.”
The campaign, which launched last month, is across out of home, ad vans, social, radio and in-store, with coffee leading on the above-the-line channels. Social content has been developed in partnership with CHORUS\MCR®, the specialist joint venture between TBWA\MCR and Vagabond Digital.
