ABOUT

The Brief
Europcar long-term business hire wanted to change how small and medium-sized businesses think about their vehicle fleets.
Businesses tend to default to vehicle leasing because it’s familiar; however, long-term rental is often overlooked as a viable alternative.
The challenge was to reposition long-term hire as a strategic, flexible solution for SME fleet decision-makers, many of whom had never considered it.

The objectives were;
Build awareness of long-term rental of cars and vans as a viable and alternative option for business
Shift perception from ‘stopgap’ to ‘smart choice’
Drive measurable traffic, engagement and leads
Use audio/radio to meet these objectives, a channel largely unexplored by Europcar Business, and reach a highly targeted audience (businesses with turnover of £10m plus and fleets of over 10 vehicles)

Concept

'EuropKarma'

A purely audio advertisement must be both memorable and relatable, driving listeners to seek more information online. Our creative approach needed to;
Be short and snappy with a clear call to action - 30 seconds is all we have to make an impact!
Have keen messaging - focusing on one or two benefits of long-term rental
Use creative audio combined with impactful creative visuals to make the concept work harder across other channels
Have a variety of options that could run throughout the year to reduce audio fatigue

Fleet choices are full of doubt and require considerable commitment from a business:
Will this vehicle still fit our needs in six months?
What if business demand changes, I could be stuck with a vehicle that doesn’t support our business needs?
Perhaps legislation may force my business to adopt EVs sooner?
We turned that ‘anxiety’ into a creative campaign idea.
Instead of talking about contracts and cost-efficiency, we dramatised ‘decision regret’ positioning Europcar as the antidote.

From this, came a campaign built around human truths:
Commitment issues
Financial anxiety
Buyer’s remorse
All of these could be resolved through flexible long-term rental.

‘Shake off lease anxiety or buyers remorse and enjoy the stress-free rental experience they call Europkarma’

Europkarma was a simple concept and a memorable hook - a rare emotional angle in B2B.

Execution

1. Turning audio into a precision B2B channel
Today’s audience landscape is shaped by data - not radio stations. For this campaign, our approach centred around a data buy.

Using a multi-channels DSP, we targeted:
Senior business decision-makers and job roles
Key industries (including construction, engineering, manufacturing)
High-intent users through behavioural signals
Audio became not just awareness, but targeted, measurable performance media.

2. Story-first creative
With only 30 seconds, every word had to resonate with our audience.
We used relatable, human scenarios, like a business “breaking up” with a lease:
“I think we’re great together… it’s just… a big commitment.”

Each execution focused on a single benefit:
Flexibility
Sustainability/Transferring to EVs
Convenience
Financial control
This kept messaging sharp, memorable and effective.

3. Podcast credibility
We used Acast with our podcast activity to drive scale targeting both relevant users through behavioural and demographic targeting as well as relevant context through contextual buys targeting premium business and finance content.

4. Always-on optimisation
The campaign continuously evolved through:
Real-time performance tracking through on-site pixel measurement
ABM (account-based marketing) targeting - this not only afforded us precision targeting but also enabled us to attribute comparing 1st party data with targeted domains
Creative rotation and refinement
Cross-channel optimisation using a fluid omni-channel approach shifting spend based on where our audience was most prominent.
Insights shaped delivery. We knew that supply of long-term hire vehicles would be tighter in school holidays so we were able to dial down activity during those specific periods and respond to the data as we went along.

Results
The campaign didn’t just deliver. It outperformed.