Caterpillar Mining: Coal Matters

Rolling out a Global Campaign

On the surface, this might just look like another ad campaign for Cat underground coal mining equipment. Deep down though, it also captures the human side and the Caterpillar affinity toward the coal mining industry.
With the acquisition of a leading underground mining manufacturer, Caterpillar became the only global manufacturer to span the surface and underground mining market.

To introduce and position these capabilities both internally and externally Dark Grey Europe developed a global campaign aimed at coal mining markets around the world.

There were several challenges to overcome: distinct local market characteristics; no machines available in Cat livery; limited photography and video possibilities in underground environments; divergent media channels across the global markets to list a few. The Dark Grey Europe approach was to have a flexible concept where local photography could be combined with photorealistic 3D CGI of the Cat machines.

The campaign covered the whole sales channel from mine owner/operators, through the dealer network to the end-user miners themselves; a series of advertisements, and billboards were created together with 3D animated video showcasing their underground equipment.

The campaign was supported with a series of  CRM mailing items; including a custom made coal bar in form of a gold ingot, and a heavy-duty miner’s lunchbox; guerrilla marketing action towbar caps for car parks at trade shows; and a custom mobile App for iPhone, Android and Windows phone.

To ensure a comprehensive launch the whole thing was kicked-off with a sales toolkit to introduce the new underground product range and the global campaign to Caterpillar sales and marketing employees.