SHELL - THE COFFEE LINE
MAKING LONDON’S BUSES
RUN ON COFFEE
We powered the iconic red London buses with our own fuel on a stunt for which we used a first batch of 30,000 liters of coffee harvested from the city’s coffee grounds — that’s enough to power one bus for a year.
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Shell's #MakeTheFuture is an initiative that supports entrepreneurs turning bright energy innovations into positive impact for communities.
To bring this platform to a millennial audience across the world, we set a world-first collaboration with start-up Bio-Bean and together created a B20 biodiesel using a coffee oil component extracted from London’s recycled coffee grounds.
With the average Londoner drinking 2.3 cups of coffee a day and the city producing over 200,000 tonnes of waste a year, our approach was to inspire a millennial audience that hardly sees adverts with a conversation about imaginative solutions for the inevitable waste of our cities.
We set a partnership with Costa Coffee stores, and gave people a free ride and a bespoke recycled cup for every coffee purchased during the campaign.
Only advertised through posters on local buses and coffee shops, the story of Shell’s innovative fuel generated 1,174 articles of news coverage (including BBC, CNN, the New York Times, Mashable and Wired, to name a few).
Video views totalled 42 million, with engagement rates 7% higher than industry sector benchmarks.
This was the most successful coverage for any Shell activation in the past five years.
WHY I LIKE IT
I wasn’t sure about working for a fossil fuel company, but when ECD Lucas Peon told me more about the brief I didn’t have any doubt.
It was a privilege to work with a team that, not only wanted to make some good, but also wanted to make it for real.
That’s a very important detail for an industry that sadly is so full of scams.
The drive of the teams at JWT & JWT Live was as good as their patience and skills to push this complicated project within such complex organizations.
CREDITS
Agency: JWT London
Year: 2017
Creative Directors: Ferran López, Chermine Assadian
Executive Creative Director: Lucas Peon
Creative team: Simon Sworn, Kat Thomas
Head JWT Live: Jonathan Terry
I helped JWT London conceptualise and lead a group of agencies in delivering this innovation to a mass audience.
Over the course of 6 months, we tested the fuel over and over again, and later we created the visual assets, content and the activation with Costa Coffee.
My role also involved ensuring a consistent narrative for the launch, integrating Shell’s stakeholders and the rest of partners and agencies involved in the PR launch.
AWARDS
D&AD: Wooden Pencil
Clio: Bronze
Epica: 2 Bronze
Cannes Lions: 2 Short list
Campaign Event Awards: Outstanding Creative Idea