Product launches are always a bit demanding, but when you are waiting to get your hands on three of the only trucks on the planet with Command Steer to produce launch videos… there is a whole new meaning to demanding.

Our latest product launch is Command Steer. It’s an amazing technology added to our Anthem and Granite trucks.

Command Steer is like power steering on top of power steering as one customer with me described it. Tony Fripp, our NASCAR hauler driver called it a “Game Changer.” You can instantly feel the steering wheel become easy enough to turn the truck with one finger. Command Steer is also monitoring road condition inputs like crowning and wind at 2,000 times per second and using the data to reduce driver effort and muscular strain. The technology makes driving an 80,000lb truck feel much more like driving in your passenger car.

How do we tell this story?

We threw a few ideas around but at the end of the day, we felt that driver reaction was the story. Everyone who experiences Command Steer has this ‘OH WOW’ reaction when they first feel the difference.

Given our relationship with NASCAR, we thought it would be good to show the return to zero feature and how Command Steer holds the wheel at center for backing up straight in tight spots. Much like at a truck stop, loading dock, or in the case of NASCAR, the infield where there are nearly one hundred trucks parked within a foot of one another. We took our truck down to Daytona International Speedway and put it in the hands of Tony Fripp and let him and Michael Waltrip test it out.

Command Steer in Anthem

We wanted to capture three videos for our Anthem (on-highway product) and three for our Granite (vocational / construction) product. Below are the final videos of each.

The NASCAR haulers rolled into Daytona on Tuesday, February 4th, 2020. We met them at the track shot the Anthem the next day on Feb 5th and launched the product two weeks later at the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) show in Atlanta, GA on February 24th.

Command Steer in Granite

The NASCAR schedule couldn’t have aligned any better. From Daytona, NASCAR was heading to Las Vegas. Well… so were we for ConExpo. ConExpo is a massive tradeshow that happens every three years. This is where we planned to launch Command Steer in our Granite – vocational / construction product. Trucks were heading to Vegas so we put a plan to meet up with Michael Waltrip at a fun place called Dig This where we would build an obstacle course to mimic a job site and demonstrate the features of Command Steer.

I lined up six to eight customers to join us on Thursday, February 20th, 2020 and along with Waltrip, they were able to experience Command Steer. The one difference here is that we had the trucks set to enable us to switch Command Steer on and off. The customers would drive a lap with Command Steer off… experience it as a normal Granite performs, and then we’d stop, flip the switch, and capture their reaction when they felt Command Steer through the wheel.

Michael’s energy and fun character kept the excitement and conversation going. The edit turnaround was incredibly tight! From the shoot, we then launched in Vegas on March 10th at ConExpo. Check them out below:

We were only able to accomplish such a fast turn around because we are structured to be nimble. As I posted earlier, we have a very productive in-house marketing team. We have awesome agency support which we relied upon on this project for line art and animations. Lastly, we worked directly with NASCAR Productions on the shooting and edits. With all three of us working together… we successfully launched a major new product set within basically a month.

Three of the first Mack Medium Duty Class 6 and Class 7 trucks make their debut in downtown Winston Salem.

Why Winston Salem you may ask? For starters, it is less than 2 hours from the new assembly plant in Salem, Virginia. It is thirty minutes west of our offices at Mack World Headquarters in Greensboro. Lastly, it is our latest yet very important new product launch shoot planned, executed, and produced by us, the Mack marketing team.

After some touch and go on the scheduling of truck availability, we landed on the week in which we would execute our photo and video shoot. Prior to I reached out to a lifelong friend who owns a landscaping business, Elite Landscaping and asked if he would be up for participating. We would logo up the truck with his company logo and put it to work for the morning while I captured still photography and Urmos ran and directed video. We later hung Mark from the back of a Chrysler Pacifica with a camera for on the road still photography. Mark and I try to tag-team the photography… getting all we can when we can.

A co-worker has a relationship with Wiseman Brewery located in downtown Winston Salem so we set them up for truck number two day two.

For truck three and day three we had our local agency Vela who we hired to help run logistics, reach out to a fun and unique company located in Tobaccoville called Nomad Farms. We also shot with Carolina Wood Floors and Hoots Brewery to show additional versatility with the trucks.

Mack Medium Duty Monday

Monday morning we set off to make Mack history. One of the first new Class 7 Mack Medium Duty trucks reports for just that… duty. We rolled onto the grounds at Elite Landscaping before sunrise ready to leave our own personal creative mark on this iconic Mack brand.

Another reward of this shoot was that we reunited with our video crew from Roadlife who lent a hand with the crane cam, audio, and some in-cab video capture. It is always great to see those guys and we all pick up right where we left off months back departing from nearly two years on the road together filming.

For those who do not realize what running logistics can entail on an on-road video shoot, I want to give a shout out to Vela for a great job in helping us turn it around over the course of three and half days. Here is a shortlist of what it takes:

• Finding our third company to participate in the shoot.
• Get logo artwork from three companies and have them printed and arrange graphic installation.
• Arrange a driver to take trucks for graphic installation and removal.
• Secure any needed roadway permits.
• Hire a police officer for blocking traffic and escorting the action.
• Talent releases and use of likeness.
• Bring in coffee, lunch, and snacks for three days of shooting.
  

From here it started rolling like clockwork. We actually ended up getting what we needed at Elite Landscaping half a day early and left Pfafftown for Tobaccoville. It was a logistical masterpiece if you are familiar with the area.

Nomad Farms

Nomad Farms is a wonderful farm located in Tobaccoville, North Carolina. Known for raising farm to table grass-fed livestock and poultry. What is more amazing is they sell it on the honor system. You simply drive up, take what you need, write your order down and receive the bill. It is quite unique and trusting none the less.

A Wiseman Drives a Mack

You guessed it, we started day two in downtown Winston Salem. I can not take credit for the headline… my co-worker coined that one the day of the shoot at Wiseman. Wiseman is a great brewery that is starting to really grow into needing a new Mack Medium Duty to haul kegs of fresh beer to and from their storage facility. The venue looks awesome and made for a great location for early morning photos.

By lunch, we had the black Mack which we shot at Elite Landscaping refreshed with the Hoot’s Brewery logo back in town. We spent the midday shooting it and as the sun began to set, we ventured back to Wiseman to make several runs through downtown Winston Salem shooting video and photography.

We wrapped up Wednesday evening late. Proving yet again that a small productive in-house marketing team can make a lot happen in a short amount of time. I think we walked away with nearly 3,000 images of which you see appear in our launch ad below as well as our website, social media, and many other places.

Built for Growth

Our agency Office of Experience in Chicago did a fantastic job with the ad layout and our Built for Growth message. We chose Built for Growth as it speaks to the small business owner, the entrepreneur who is working each day growing his or her own business. Here we are saying that Mack Medium Duty is built to grow with them.

And for the pleasure of seeing it all come together… Mark Urmos did a great job at editing and producing the final launch video. All in three days of work.

The Mack Roadlife series was the result of how creativity and marketing partnerships collide. That is what happened when we paused long enough in the midst of a major truck launch to realize we had a perfect storm brewing to utilize our marketing partnerships and create our first long-form content series. At Mack, we typically do not do many marketing partnerships. It just so happened that coming off of the Mack Anthem launch we found ourselves in the midst of some really cool opportunities.

We had been the Official Hauler of NASCAR since 2017 as we geared up for the Mack Anthem launch which happened in September 2017. That relationship led us to partner with Richard Petty Motorsports and Bubba Wallace. We also had time remaining with our Khalil Mack partnership. For years we had the desire to tell the amazing story of the Department of Sanitation New York (DSNY) and how they use Mack LRs to not only remove trash in the city but also snow. An opportunity that was seemingly becoming a possibility as a snowstorm was threatening the city.

For the Anthem launch, we had Steve Moakler write a song for us around our tagline, Born Ready. This song inspired Steve to write an entire album which he went on to title Born Ready and launched a tour… the Born Ready Tour powered by Mack Trucks.

As more and more stories started to surface we decided to lock ourselves in an offsite brainstorming session for a couple of days and not come out until we flushed out a solid content plan capitalizing on these relationships and then some.

As I have written prior, one key benefit of creating your own content in-house and not hiring it all out to an agency is that doing so brings you closer to your own community, your own products, and mainly your own customers. It enables the brand to build true relationships and what was about to transpire from Roadlife solidified that one hundred percent! There are true connections to a brand that can not be bought… this is how those connections are created.

From this Roadlife was born. Roadlife would become an eight-episode series plus a reunion episode that is approximately twenty minutes in length and told subtle stories of life on the road with the who, how, and why of what it takes to perform some extraordinary jobs.

Roadlife Official Trailer

Here is how the episodes would play out. We planned each one around weather, NASCAR events, customer availability, and certainly around the events driving the stories we sought to tell. After we identified each story that would become an episode of Roadlife we wrote the storyboards for each and began scheduling production. We hired a local three-man team to support us on camera and audio. However, Mark Urmos would be producing and editing each episode in-house.

We then hit the road traveling over 32,325 miles across 32 cities in 136 days capturing each of these extraordinary stories.

1. The City that Never Sleeps – Five boroughs in five days as we chase a major snowstorm unfolding in New York City
2. Built on Family – Khalil Mack and his father Sandy meet a fourth-generation Mack employed family
3. New Blood – Bubba Wallace and Richard Petty get to know the NASCAR hauler drivers who deliver the race week after week
4. Breaking the Mold – Meet two women who are breaking the mold in a male-dominated trucking industry
5. Ryan’s Route – Ryan Hickman is saving the planet one plastic bottle at a time
6. Long Way from Home – Two long haul drivers criss-cross Canada miles away from home
7. Roadie Ready – Zack Brown Band and ZB Customs customize a Mack Anthem getting ready for their summer tour season
8. Born Ready – Behind the scenes with country music star Steve Moakler on his Born Ready Tour
9. Reunion – Behind the Scenes

As we hit the road one of the main goals was to begin building recognition and equity around the #Roadlife hashtag. From our initial research, we knew there were some posts using the hashtag but mostly around RV’ing and camping. Each of us (all 5) that makes up the Mack marketing team jumped to our own personal social media to post a behind-the-scenes look as we hit road filming #Roadlife.

We uploaded each of these episodes to Amazon Prime. We chose Amazon Prime because for one it is free to upload your own content. Secondly, the strategy behind the Roadlife series was to create a long-form documentary that people would learn the behind-the-scenes of the customer or find interest in the storyline. These were not to be a commercial for Mack, but yet in a subtle way viewers would connect the product and the application to their own business situations.

Lead Generation

Roadlife was more than just storytelling. As we released each episode on MackTrucks.com we created a downloadable spec sheet of trucks that were shown in each episode. This download put potential customers into our marketing automation funnel which was built in Oracle Eloqua where we would further nurture them with a series of content around the product as well as the services offered by Mack Trucks.

We would nurture prospects with various additional calls to action at which the end result would send the prospect to their local dealer as a marketing qualified lead or (MQL).

Results

Over the course of Season 1 of Roadlife we generated 3,687 leads. These came in as either signup for additional episodes and information or direct product content downloads. Additionally, the amount of social media activity and recognition from marketing publications like AdWeek and trucking publications was excellent. We went on to make it as an Oracle Modern Marketing Markie Award finalist as a result of the Roadlife campaign.

The Horn video is a personal creative first after making the decision to transform into an in-house marketing department for video and content creation. The vision was to highlight an element of trucking that everyone could make a connection with and most importantly, strike an emotional chord. Another element was to start grounding our ‘Born Ready’ tagline.

So thinking back through my own life prior to joining Mack and becoming involved in the trucking industry, my only interaction was as a kid fist-pumping truckers from the car to blow their airhorn as they passed by.

I pitched the idea of centering the video around the horn to Mark and from there we began collaborating on where we could take this. We began to brainstorm and soon the storyboard started to take shape. The emotional thread would be the circle of life. The young kid you see in the back of the old family station wagon would discover his own affinity for trucking. The ending would be him as a grown man driving his own Mack and experiencing a life reflection as he passes a kid fist-pumping him to blow the airhorns with this look of simple childhood excitement.

The Horn Creative – Four Goals

Taking this direction with the creative would not be simple to pull off. To create the nostalgia we would need to reach out to Mack owners and collectors to get access to a few generations of Macks.

We would need to scout a few locations and explore permits to close off highways or secure police escorts for filming. Of course, we would need to spend some time talent scouting. We need the kid, the teenager, and the grown man to bear some resemblance.

While getting to be creative and see ideas come to life, the purpose of our creative is to always support core business objectives. There were four main business objectives for The Horn. The thread of it was to show how some people are born for the trucking industry. To start bringing our new Born Ready tag line to life.

1. Americana and Nostalgia – We wanted to illustrate that Mack has been here for many generations. Born and built here in the United States since 1900.
2. Highway Product – The Horn was to reiterate the generational success of Mack’s Highway truck line and spark awareness and interest as we knew the launch of a new highway sleeper was lurking behind the scenes.
3. Driver Image – Truck drivers keep America moving and we always want to tip our hats and say thanks when the opportunity presents itself.
4. Social Media – We wanted to give the drivers and people in the trucking industry a place to share their own ‘Born Ready’ childhood stories. We set up a Tumblr page for The Horn and had many great story submissions.
   

The sad part for me on this one was not being able to go out and help shoot. Mark covered this one alone with the support of our agency Vela who ran logistics, supported the talent scouting, and also provided extra camera and audio support.

Beyond that, the story, the creative, the video edit, the production, and all of the supporting campaign concepts were our creation. I would also mention that our agency OX did the creative for the landing page and helped with styling the Tumblr page for story submissions.

And without further ado… here is The Horn. Hope you enjoy!

The Horn

And how did we do? Well the video was incredibly well received. The day we released it was one of the funnest moments I have experienced by just watching all the comments come pouring in. We had many compliments from people across the trucking industry and drivers. We also hit our goal of raising awareness for Mack and grew our social media audience in preparing for the launch of our new highway truck a few years away.

Below is a pdf of the campaign concepts and embedded with some of the top comments and reactions.