When you need petrol, your main concern is finding your nearest petrol station – which means people don’t really care which company runs it. This is a concern because there are fewer petrol stations than ever: there has been a decline in number of over 80% since the mid-1960s in the UK.

In a sector with little brand loyalty, Shell wanted to make sure that as many drivers as possible could find Shell’s petrol stations easier than any of the competition. Using a driving app to deliver Shell’s brand message was a creative vision perfectly realised.

We bought branded pins that show Waze users whenever they were driving near to a Shell petrol station, meaning that even if drivers weren’t consciously on the lookout for places to fill up, they may be inspired to do an impulse stop.

We also bought the ‘nearby arrow’ which points users to nearby Shell locations during the first few moments after opening the app. Buying both of these gained Shell significant added value: free sponsored placements at the top of the petrol search results as well as specific places search results.

Finally, we ran ‘zero-speed takeovers’, a format which appears on-screen while the car is static to deliver a brand message for Shell’s premium fuel, V-Power. This meant that the awareness focused ad units were only served when the car was stationary, ensuring drivers were not distracted during their journey and complying with Shell health & safety regulation.

Our campaign re-routed over 67,209 journeys to Shell forecourts – not bad for a £32,000 media investment. The first month delivered 13 million impressions for Shell, resulting in over 85,000 ad engagements.

67,209 drivers navigated to a Shell Petrol station in total after clicking on one of Shell’s messages. Every Shell station in the UK received visitors from the campaign, with the busiest five each gaining over 1,000 extra drivers filling up over the month.

The campaign had an even delivery over the month, but navigations from the ad units increased every week (up 15% from week 1 to week 4).

“The campaign produced truly amazing results over such a short period of time. We’re already keen to explore opportunities to build a wider retail partnership within Waze that can bring to life the full portfolio of Shell Retail messaging”. – Franziska Kaiser, Brand & Communications Team Lead at Shell.