Turtle Wax
Project role: Creative Director of Copy at Petrolicious
Turtle Wax is the oldest and best known car care brand in the world. As a family-run company since 1943, Turtle Wax was entrenched in a 20th Century sales model that was yielding less profits as big box retailers demanded tighter and tighter margins. Turtle Wax’s customer base was increasingly older and set it their ways, and the newer, more dynamic brands were winning first-time car owners, hurting Turtle Wax’s business into the future.
Turtle Wax came to us to craft a more premium, fresh-faced, and direct-sales-friendly strategy. We overhauled every aspect of their brand image and marketing strategy, including social media, paid media, ambassador and experiential programs, web development, and content creation. In just the first four months of involvement, Turtle Wax’s social channels grew almost fivefold and online sales grew to almost 10x their projected revenue.
REVEALING WHAT WAS ALREADY THERE
Turtle Wax is a storied brand with strong values, deep knowledge, and high-quality products. But these qualities were hard to find though the outdated brand identity, low-quality content, and lack of meaningful presence on social. As copywriter of a small, collaborative team at Petrolicious, I oversaw photo and video production, crafted product and ad copy, and wrote and managed Turtle Wax’s social channels. In that capacity, I was also responsible strategic decisions, progress reports, and budget management. To increase the perceived value of the brand, we produced videos and photoshoots that highlighted beautiful cars and their owners in a style unique to Petrolicious.
Social activation and ambassador outreach.
The automotive community is tight-knit and social. But COVID-19 brought our original strategy to create in-person activations and events to a dead-end. To compensate for the unfortunate global events, we harnessed the outreach of a worldwide crew of automotive ambassadors and keep the interesting content flowing. We invited the community to participate in monthly social activations that would allow them to safely participate in the culture, no matter where they could or couldn’t go.
