Celebrity DJ Sasha Martinengo, will drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town in a classic car, powered by tweets and will broadcast his show Gearz on Ballz Visual Radio live from the road for five days stopping at 20 Caltex filling stations along the way.

According to Marlin van Noie, creative director at digital agency Quirk, the campaign is running in three phases and is hosted on Facebook and Twitter. “Everything from what Martinengo listens to and what he packs to what he eats and how he gets there is in the hands of the public,” he says.

“Without public participation, he will be stranded, therefore he has to make sure his trip is engaging and entertaining for the 1,600 kms if he hopes to get enough people tweeting #keepitgoing to ensure he can fill his tank using Caltex with Techron® fuel.”

To make it exciting and to get the public involved, phase one and two will allow consumers the opportunity to win R10 000 for their participation in each phase respectively, with a further R4 000 daily cash prize up for grabs for the duration of the five day road trip. So a total of R40 000 in cash to be won.

Van Noie says that the campaign is aimed at promoting Caltex with Techron® fuel’s superior cleaning properties and will leverage the new ‘Going’ brand television commercial, which launched last month to coincide with the modernisation of Caltex forecourts and the opening of new Freshstop convenience stores countrywide.

“The social media campaign aims to position Caltex as a trusted and loved South African brand with the use of an interactive and engaging campaign that is relevant to the new brand television commercial and everything that Caltex with Techron® stands for,” he adds.

“Throughout the trip, we’ll be highlighting each Caltex forecourt that Martinengo passes through and highlighting why they play such an important role in every trip.”

He says that Caltex believes that how you get there is as important as getting there. “With this in mind, we used Caltex’s ‘It’s how you get there’ positioning as a platform to demonstrate the reason for being,” says van Noie. “Our idea had to activate and be aligned to ‘It’s how you get there’ and in turn, we came up with ‘Keep It Going’.”

He says that the premise of ‘We’re going to keep his baby going for years and years’ played a large part in the inspiration behind the campaign, using old classic cars to demonstrate the benefits of Caltex with Techron®, while also talking to the emotional side of the humanrelationship between a person and their car.

“The keep it going theme opens up relevant social commentary and shows people how the product can play a credible role in their day-to-day activities,” says Van Noie.

“We are hoping that the campaign will make Caltex with Techron® relevant and interesting to those who might not know that it is a superior fuel,” he adds. “We want to engage with people who would otherwise not be interested in petroleum and therefore will miss out on thebenefits that Caltex with Techron® has to offer.”

From a creative point of view, he says: “From the get-go, we knew that the cars were at the centre of the emotional pull of this campaign. We decided to place the cars in settings that would accentuate them while showcasing scenery you might find on a typical South African road trip. We were fortunate to work with Gideon van der Watt, a great photographer who captured the classic cars and from this base, we composited surreal imagery based on real South African locations. We opted for a high contrast design (embellished and emotive imagery within a simplistic layout) to capture our audience’s attention.”

“The nature of social campaigns in general allows us to build on the idea behind the TV commercial and provide a platform to delve into the intrinsic of Caltex and Caltex with Techron® as a brand,” van Noie adds. “A social media campaign is the perfect compliment to a good TV commercial.”