I rewrote this headline about a million times. I think I still like "Born in the Wind Tunnel" better, but it didn't explicitly talk about saving money. Go check it out at Drive Cascadia.

In 2007, Freightliner called together all its marketing and advertising vendors to announce its first new truck in nearly a decade. And Freightliner loved this truck. Our job was to get fleets and owner-operators to love it, too.

Here’s the thing: Fleets and Owner-Operators have two very different mindsets. Two distinctly different audiences? Two distinctly different sites. Ah, the beauty of interactive marketing…

And now, something a little more fun. Have fun when you go to Visit Cascadia.

In hindsight, it amazes me that I finished this writing in about three weeks.

OnMouseover: The horn says: "Excuse me sir. Please note my strenuous objection to your abrupt and reckless lane change."

Drive Cascadia: Rational Doesn’t Mean Boring

The Drive Cascadia site, in particular, required an ungodly amount of interpretation of “FaBs” documents (Feature and Benefits), and interviews with engineers and product managers. There’s no shortage of rational, long-form selling in the Drive Cascadia site. But more importantly, we pushed the client to use a tone that was a little more personable and entertaining:

The Reverse Ejector Seat

Nightmare scenario: somehow the Cascadia rolls, and the safety features snap into action. The seatbelt tightens and the side airbags deploy. And to make more headroom, the truck’s seat fires downward to the floor like a reverse ejection seat. Everything happens in less than a second, greatly improving the odds of walking away from a bad wreck.

Visit Cascadia: Change Drivers’ Perceptions

The issue facing Freightliner was that its trucks are considered the white Ford Taurus of trucks. The perception is that they’re the least expensive, most reliable, but least sexy fleet truck. There is actually a country song called “White Freightliner Blues,” which reflects the easiest color truck for a fleet to resell.

The Cascadia does NOT suffer from this perception. Every driver who climbs up and takes it for a spin remarks how quiet and smooth the car is. “Like a luxury car,” they say.

So as I wrote the the Drive Cascadia site, I kept a joke file on my desktop for the Visit Cascadia site. While the client reviewed the Drive Cascadia content, I started cracking myself up with such articles as:

• The Seat on a Seat Contest, which is going into its second month.
• The Virtual Tour of Cascadia, which includes the Jackelope Ranch amusement park and petting zoo.

Jackelope Ranch Petting Zoo and Mini-Golf: All the holes are named after myths: Sasquatch, Jumbo Shrimp, Traffic Flow, and Clean Truck Stop.

Perhaps the most interactive piece from Visit Cascadia was the Request-o-matic. It allows drivers to have an email sent to their boss, buddy, wife, hubby, or someone else recommending the Cascadia. (Remember, the bulk of drivers in the U.S. work for a fleet, and fleets are Freightliner’s strength.)

"So who do I have to convince to put you in a Cascadia?"

And below, here’s the resulting letter. To write this, I ended up making an INSANE matrix of copy based on options chosen in the form. There are a few hundred variations of the letter. Even then, I missed about 15 different variations, and ended up doing some of the programming with a template provided to me by our developers. It was like Mad Libs on steroids and amphetamines.

Letter excerpt: "I know repeat customers are good, but Thom is here too much. He hangs out in the lobby for hours. He drinks all the free coffee. He eats all the free popcorn. And he ruins the crossword puzzles in the free magazines by writing in pen. What’s a 4 letter word for nuisance? T-H-O-M."

The campaign was a success. The client was thrilled. Freightliner Trucks ranks No. 11 on Google and No. 6 on Yahoo for a search for Cascadia. The buzz about the truck is positive. Over time, we’ve done a few more projects around the launch, such as a Google Adwords campaign targeting the competition, a video banner ad campaign, and numerous messaging updates.

The Cascadia gave us an opportunity to revisit the Run Smart manifesto.

Breathing New Life into “Run Smart”

Freightliner Trucks is the left brain of the trucking world. They make durable heavy duty trucks that run until the wheels fall off. They pride themselves on total cost of ownership, uptime, and ROI.

They are, however, almost apologetic about it. When they launched the new Cascadia truck — their first new truck in nearly a decade — we tried to change that.

The oil crisis in 2007 and 2008 sent diesel prices sky-rocketing. Carrier contracts could absorb small swings in diesel prices over a quarter or two, but fuel was double and triple what it was.

And here was Freightliner with a truck that got better fuel mileage, looked hot, and, unlike previous trucks, had a luxury car ride. After all, this is a company owned by the parent of Mercedes Benz.

So rather than touting the numbers, we went on the attack.

We used drivers talking about their test drive to give the claims credibility. And we used Google to target competitor’s search terms and steal their traffic. And we could get away with it because Freightliner had done their homework in the wind-tunnel out on Swan Island. Freightliner provided us with direct comparison fuel saving numbers*.

We gave the numbers context. Saving money became a cause. Run Smart meant more than padding the pockets of the owners — it meant keeping everyone working.

A few weeks afterward, Frank Roehr of Young & Roehr fame, stopped by our offices. He saw the Hard Facts manifesto on the wall, and said, “When I came up with Run Smart, this is exactly what I had in mind.”

* Postscript: As it turns out, the numbers we received were disputed. We ended up taking the campaign down. Seems to me the thing to do would’ve been to fix the numbers and move forward, but I don’t know all the details.