Livin’ the Dream and Winning Awards

It’s every marketer’s dream to create something beautiful that catches attention for their brand while at the same time driving qualified marketing leads too. Caterpillar’s dozer team did exactly that and made a marketer’s dream into a reality with the Dream Dozer campaign.

This campaign was centered around an interactive game where users could create their own tricked-out dream dozer and submit it to qualify to win a contest. The game/contest was the hook used to engage users, create social buzz, connect consumers with relevant content and, ultimately, collect user data to qualify leads. The dynamic online game caught the attention and imagination of their customers and garnered attention from the Muse Creative Awards in five categories:

• Digital Marketing Campaign – Platinum Winner
• Product Launch – Platinum Winner
• Promotion/Contest – Platinum Winner
• Business-to-Business – Gold Winner
• Construction – Rose Gold Winner

The Back Story

This idea came about to help promote and build attention around the launch of the new Cat^® D6 dozer, which was the first platform change in almost 30 years. The challenge was clear: educate (and even re-educate) the target dozer audience about the machine’s features and benefits.

The Cat Dream Dozer was created to build awareness, educate customers and drive new prospects. This interactive design game allowed users to create their very own D6 machine with real options, then personalize it by selecting fantasy add-ons ranging from cool to crazy and then submit it to win a dozer experience.

Of the completed designs, six entries were selected as winners and were given an all-expenses paid trip to Caterpillar’s facility to experience the dozer and its engineers in real life.

• Before playing, users had to provide contact information; to qualify as a marketing lead, they could opt in for a chance to win the Dream Dozer Contest.
• In the machine setup stage of the game, the playful copy kept users engaged while raising awareness of the D6 value messaging.
• The ability to share dozer creations using the hashtag #dreamdozer helped create social buzz.
• Dynamic content on the site helped educate customers on the real-life D6 selections they had made.

For media, unique designs were showcased to grab attention and drive traffic to the game.

“We are honored to be recognized by one of the largest international competitions for creative concepts, ideas and designs,” said Clare Koeppel, Marketing Consultant for Global Construction Infrastructure at Caterpillar. “Through a lot of pre-planning and collaboration, our teams were able to take a creative hook and put a well-thought out strategy behind it in order to engage dozer customers and attract new ones.”

Not only did the campaign attract attention and stir up social buzz, it drove real marketing qualified leads for Caterpillar. At the start of the campaign, key performance indicators were identified for the awareness stage, the consideration stage and the conversion stage. After media ran for just one month, the campaign had already received 8 million impressions. Thanks to well-thought out targeted media efforts, 75 percent of the total visits to the site were new traffic. But most importantly, 22 percent of the total clicks to the site were deemed a marketing qualified lead.

Contestants had the opportunity to describe what sets their dream dozer apart. To our delight, customers shared their powerful stories, personality, passion for the industry and pride in the brand.

It’s probably safe to say that the first thing that comes to mind when you think of heavy machinery isn’t cutting-edge online games. But if you dream it up, it looks like they will come…and play.

About the Muse Awards

Muse Creative Awards is an international competition for creative concepts, ideas or designs through traditional materials or electronic media. The Muse Creative Awards honors the power of concept and design that envisions a brilliant future — the creators who transform advertising and marketing in traditional and technically innovative ways.