Our challenge for PETRONAS Lubricants was to tell their stories beyond their usual target audience of motor enthusiasts. Our communications strategy was to take a ‘top down’ and ‘bottoms up’ approach – telling both the corporate stories of PLI as well as the personal heartfelt ones. On top of that, we were tasked to come up with a communication initiative that can be replicated across various PLI markets globally.
We initiated a stakeholder engagement-cum-media profiling series known as the Shaping Industry-ready graduates series. We partnered with a local automotive college known as Despark College and organised a learning session with PLI’s PETRONAS Trackside Fluid Engineer, to share about his experience and journey working alongside the Formula One racing team. The goal of this series was to share real insights from the automotive industry, in hopes of providing the students with some field exposure, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when the students were learning virtually.
Various education, youth and automotive media picked up on the story, and were intrigued by the role of the PETRONAS Trackside Fluid Engineer. The engagement session was also well received from the automotive students, seeing an increase in the number of students who participated in the next instalment of the series. This initiative was also successfully implemented in other regions, even expanding to a collaboration between other international automotive colleges.
