For many people across the world, car care can be intimidating, but for STP®, their goal was to demonstrate how easy-to-use their products are—replacing intimidation with knowledge and pride.

STP® looked to empower all walks of life to care for their vehicles and keep them running at peak performance. To help bring this messaging to life, OH Partners set out to educate and reach new audiences, through the “It’s Not Complicated. It’s Science” influencer campaign. By working with the right brand partners who provide trusted testimonials and stories—while using STP® products—the brand was able to reach new audiences and increase their followers.

 Sarah Fortune Gill and her daughter getting ready for their road trip.

Connect
With any influencer program, the most important part is starting off on the right foot. Looking for the right partners who are brand fans is extremely important for a successful influencer program. It’s key to work with people who have a real need for your product or service and are likely to use the product, even without a partnership.

To reach the right people for STP®, we worked with influencers from the following groups:

• Busy parents: these are individuals who are driving every single day and need easy-to-use car maintenance tips in order to get the job done fast and feel safe while on the road.
• Car enthusiasts: these are individuals who may consider themselves “gearheads” and often teach others how to care for their vehicles.
• Road warriors: these are individuals who may have high-mileage vehicles and need to give their cars a little extra tender love and care.

Ignite
The overall goal on social media for STP® was to expand the perceptions of STP® from racing-centric to why it is a modern-day product for modern day cars by highlighting real stories from real consumers. We knew that video was king among the brand’s social media audiences and that while product-focused imagery drove web traffic, they didn’t help drive the optimal level of engagements. We worked one-on-one with influencers to help shape their content through video storytelling to encourage audience participation, increasing brand awareness. From Instagram Stories to YouTube videos, influencers amplified the “It’s Not Complicated. It’s Science” messaging, helping their audiences understand the ease of proper car care and why it’s so important.

Cultivate
Coming together and sharing brand fans’ stories, helped STP® not only increase brand awareness but also helped grow

their following on Instagram by 2.5 percent during the five-month campaign. Working with a mix of influencers who had various levels of followers, we were able to tap into different key performance indicators. By partnering with bigger, more well-known influencers, we were able to exceed our goal of impressions by over one million impressions. We were also able to keep a high-level of conversation and engagement by working with influencers who have smaller, but tighter-knit communities of followers, to earn an average engagement rate of 16.5 percent during the campaign.

After five months and four unique partnerships, STP® earned over 15 million impressions, garnered over 48,000 engagements and drove more web traffic each month than all of their own brand channels combined—all accomplished through working with the right brand fans.

Could influencers make an impact for your brand? Contact us here to learn more, and ask about our detailed playbook for identifying, vetting and working with social media influencers.

About the Author: Amelia Goe is a social media account executive who specializes in brand partnerships and influencer marketing. With over six years of experience working in social media marketing Amelia has helped numerous brands increase their social media performance and improve one-on-one connections with their audiences.