As always the London ICIS Conference in February highlighted several trends for the global lubes industry. Having had a chance to digest the huge amount of invaluable content, it is clear that “complexity” dominated much of the discussion during the event.
Bill Downey, of consultants Roland Berger, presented the key trends in the automotive world, along with the increased importance of electronics and mobile solutions for the motorist (OATS has been kindly granted permission to reproduce Bill's presentation for download).
He highlighted four automotive aspects in particular: “Always online, always connected; Shift to Asia; Electrification and hybridisation and Small is beautiful - will have a particularly powerful impact on the lubricants industry. This will create opportunities for lubricant marketers who are able to anticipate a shift in location, who can create the right new products, who are positioned in the correct channels, and who are able to take advantage of new promotional tools”.
Trevor Russell, VP Sales & Marketing of Infineum, referred to the continued progression of complex lubricants specifications and the ongoing need for investment. The hardware is more complex with growing diversity of powertrains. But as vehicle demand and production moves south and east, the authority in specification setting will also move away from the Europe and the US towards Asia.
However, he went as far as to wonder openly whether the current industry model is really sustainable? Is it still appropriate that car manufacturers should be creating more and different standards? Should not automakers be co-operating to increase genuine standardisation, rather than developing minor variations that are manifested as part numbers? While they still are, the lubricants marketers need to deal with the situation as they find it.
Shell's Lubematch is the most popular area of the company's website Image: Shell |
Colin Abraham, VP Marketing for Shell Lubricants, referred to the importance of lubricant recommendations on websites, commenting that “Lubematch is the most important part and most visited part of the Shell Lubricants website.”
Why? To buy the right lubricants, consumers need to be able to find the correct lubricants for their vehicle in the first place, simply and quickly. But it is no easy task to maintain an accurate database when equipment, operating conditions and fuel types vary globally. The world has become more complex and lubes along with it.
This is, of course, why OATS exists! Nearly 30 years after our foundation, we find that Lubricants Marketing Complexity has become the norm. Lubricant companies need to effectively combine equipment databases, technical specification complexity, the internet and cloud computing, along with the fundamentals of competitive positioning and channel selection.
Lubricant marketers need to re-appraise their approach to resolve this complexity. At OATS we have been rebuilding our systems to meet these challenges and have been building the solutions that will help lubricants organisations to create stand-out marketing whether online or offline.
We would be delighted to talk to you directly about the issues raised here. More specifically, we are actively encouraging discussion on Lubricants Marketing Complexity via a programme of webinars with OATS experts. To book a session and enhance your understanding of this challenging issue, simply click here to contact us.
Sebastian Crawshaw
Chairman, OATS