The TRW campaign. This time it’s personal.

So inspired and inventive was the comedy writing of the great Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) that he was frequently asked by fans where he got his ideas from. One of his favourite replies was, ‘A mail order company in Connecticut’. As Adams’ answer suggests, the question misses the point. Good ideas can’t be churned out artificially, they evolve from our real thoughts and observations, and, like, comedy writing, copywriting works best when it captures the essential truths we observe in memorable messages that the audience can easily recognise.

Our latest major campaign is for TRW Aftermarket. TRW is the leading manufacturer of safety products for the world’s vehicles, and our campaign is built on the essential truth that an engineering giant with a track record as successful as TRW is not just a faceless organisation turning out (albeit exceptionally good) car parts. Their excellence comes from human dedication, capability, passion, creativity… and that’s what makes the difference between a company that’s good and a company that’s great. So, our campaign for TRW Aftermarket gives this renowned name a real human face.

TRW is a brand that manufactures premium parts that are inherently high quality but, to the uninformed eye, may appear largely indistinguishable from those of a competitor. Putting a real human face to the name is a powerful way to bring personality to such a brand. For decades, real customers that endorse products in TV ads have given a real human face to washing powder and dog food brands. Other campaigns have successfully used real employees to provide the human face, such as banking company Halifax, who brought staff singing and dancing onto television screens in a campaign that risked undermining the seriousness of its financial products but which has since become a long-running hit. However, our campaign takes things further, getting to the hearts of the people within TRW and digging deeper into the brand. The stars of our campaign are not singing and dancing on cue, or being used as mere window dressing while they spout marketing-speak about the product. They’re talking about their true passions, the values that drive them, and how these feelings and ideas run through their private and working lives, enhancing everything that they do.

So where did this idea come from? Not a mail order company in Connecticut. It came from taking a long, hard look at competitor campaigns and learning about our new client TRW Aftermarket. We could soon see that, in a marketplace where customers are looking for added value, and may see little surface difference between brands, there was strong potential for us to show that TRW Aftermarket can offer much more. In the past, TRW Aftermarket had based its marketing around product shots alone. This time, we decided, it was time to get personal. The campaign would be called True Originals and the many ‘originals’ working within the company would be at the heart of it.

The True Originals campaign uses press ads, films and a whole range of supporting material to tell the stories of the people who work at TRW and show that TRW people are simply made for the jobs that they do, through and through. This not only shows customers that TRW excels today but also that they can always rely on TRW to excel in the future, because it’s in the nature of the people at TRW to achieve excellence. True Originals also allows us to create a truly global campaign by telling the stories of TRW people all around the world. And because our campaign shows these people to be imaginative, dedicated and highly professional, it underlines the truth that TRW is a premium supplier.

At the end of the day, all campaigns need to drive sales, and so this campaign was designed to work not only at brand level but also at product level because the result of the dedication we see from our TRW stars is product innovation, optimum safety and the part quality that enables a fast, efficient fit. The take-out for the aftermarket is that you can do no better than to specify parts made, tested and approved by our True Originals.

We launched the campaign with Guido Orth-Gauch, Technical Author at TRW. Whether he’s playing in his jazz band or writing a manual for a new brake pad, Guido wants every audience to enjoy the same thing: a great performance. And there’ll be many more True Originals to come; TRW people with knowledge and expertise that make the difference between parts that are good and parts that are great.

As Douglas Adams knew only too well, ideas don’t come off-the-shelf, pre-packed, by mail order. At least, the really good ones don’t. But let us get to know you and we’ll find the true story about your business that will be truly compelling for your target audience. Contact us at david.hankinson@lawcreative.co.uk or brett.sammels@lawcreative.co.uk.