Geared up: A dazzling virtual booth

Challenge

A bright new concept

Since 1901, California-based Meguiar’s, a 3M company, has been creating industry-leading car care products that bring a flawless finish to the most gorgeously engineered vehicles of yesterday and today. The brand’s tagline, Reflect Your Passion™, is perfectly aligned to connect its target market of passionate auto enthusiasts.

Typically, the Meguiar’s booth is one of the highlights of the annual SEMA Show, the premier event for automotive specialty equipment manufacturers and industry buyers around the world. This year, however, there would be no traditional booths at SEMA, because the in-person event was transitioning to SEMA360, a completely digital trade show.

“We were already planning to dive into the digital world, in hopes of engaging international buyers. So, while the immediate need was to create a digital experience for SEMA360, we were also hoping to create an experience for the long term.”

– RJ DeVera, Digital Leader

Because the digital format of the event would expand the audience beyond any previous years’ events, the team at Meguiar’s knew they needed to craft an experience that would dazzle at SEMA360 and drive plenty of qualified traffic to its site. Beyond the event, however, Meguiar’s envisioned an evergreen place for buyers and auto enthusiasts to experience new products and hopefully become a powerful tool for the sales team to use with retail partners, as well as a powerful data collection tool for gauging product interest.

The plan? A stand-alone virtual trade show experience that would succeed at SEMA360 and could exist far beyond that single event.

The Meguiar’s team turned to 3M’s partner, Freeman, for help.

Solution

Get your motor running

Our digital interactive team that designs and executes augmented reality experiences teamed up with Meguiar’s to bring this virtual vision to life.

This cross-functional team collaborated to design a fully interactive, mobile-friendly environment deemed the “Meguiar’s Experience.” The new site enabled buyers to explore every aspect of Meguiar’s products, with a 360-degree immersive view featuring new product information, useful how-to videos created in-house, and a walk-around of some seriously sweet vehicles. Even better, the Meguiar’s team could measure every single click the site generated.

Exciting, interactive content? Check.

Measurable data? Check.

Next on the list? How to get the word out about this great new content.

First, the team connected with Meguiar’s international and domestic sales teams to make sure everybody knew how to use and promote the new site.

Then, they turned to the influencer partners. In 2020, Meguiar’s expanded heavily on its influencer marketing strategy, leveraging two distinct groups: “macro” influencers with millions of followers, and “micro” influencers who each boast a few thousand extremely passionate and young auto enthusiasts. Wisely, when choosing which cars to feature in the Meguiar’s Experience, the team chose a stunning custom modified 2020 Chevy Corvette, built by TJ Hunt — whose 1.88 million YouTube follower count guaranteed plenty of buzz.

Meguiar’s also took full advantage of its own network of followers, promoting The Meguiar’s Experience on every social post leading up to the event.

Result

Owning the road

The Meguiar’s strategy was straightforward: Work with Freeman to create an immersive and exciting experience, and then go all-in on promotion by leveraging influencer marketing and social media.

This quick-pivot vision paid off.

SEMA itself highlighted the experience on its main conference page. Other industry sites sat up and noticed as well, with RacingJunk.com calling it “a fresh, fun take on a virtual launch.

Moreover, in keeping with the big-picture strategy, this initiative has generated impressive results beyond the SEMA Show:

• While over 13,000 new users visited the Meguiar’s Experience during SEMA360, the site has continued to draw 50,000 new users to the experience since the event, providing a compelling experience to position its brand.
• Maintaining this experience on the brand’s own site means keeping its own data. The Meguiar’s team now has a treasure trove of key metrics, helping them understand which products (and related content) drive the most engagement.

The Meguiar’s team couldn’t have been more pleased with the results:

“We knew what we wanted to accomplish — we just weren’t certain what was possible. Between the work from the Meguiar’s and Freeman teams, along with the efforts from our influencer partners and social media teams, the Meguiar’s Experience exceeded our expectations.”

– Mike Pennington, Director of Customer Relations

The company’s international partners were equally enthusiastic:

“The attention to detail provided a ‘wow!’ experience that truly highlighted the passion Meguiar’s has for car care — and their passion for innovation and leadership.”

– Tony J. D’Amato, Experiential Marketing Manager

Meguiar’s is already looking forward and continuing to explore new opportunities. The team plans on testing new content throughout the year on the Meguiar’s Experience site and preparing a hybrid event strategy once the SEMA Show resumes in-person again.

This event marked the very first time end-use consumers had access to the Meguiar’s booth. This shift has set up a rich opportunity for more consumer marketing, more brand awareness — and more data gathering, allowing Meguiar’s to rev up even more growth.