Through our partnership with the Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA), the Lessing-Flynn team was introduced to Golden Grain Energy. Golden Grain Energy is a privately-held company dedicated to adding value to northern Iowa’s corn production through the promotion of ethanol, a cleaner-burning fuel made from corn. As a strategic partner, Lessing-flynn worked with Golden Grain Energy and several other sponsors to create a Biofuels Mobile Education Trailer which now travels the state of Iowa educating the public about ethanol production.

 

The situation

Many American consumers are unaware of the many benefits of ethanol for the economy (local and national), the environment — even engines! Our challenge was to create an engaging educational display within the Biofuels Mobile Education Trailer to explain the benefits of ethanol production and encourage its use as a preferred fuel option and create support for it’s production within our state.

With a lot of information and limited display space, our team wanted to be creative and strategic in content creation to make sure the experience was informative, digestible, high-tech and relevant.

 

The solution

When planning the Biofuels Mobile Education trailer’s content, we worked with the team of sponsors to establish our audience as potential ethanol consumers, with nods to farmers and agriculturalists who would also be interested in viewing the display. From there we chose our theme “Engine Smart, Earth Kind” and categorized our content planning to highlight four key buckets (or as we call it — the four E’s of ethanol):

 

The environment

Many consumers walking through the trailer care about the environment and how ethanol plays a role in taking care of our world. Adding ethanol to gasoline reduces tailpipe emissions of harmful pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, exhaust hydrocarbons, air toxins and fine particulate matter. Plus, ethanol production requires less water than gasoline production.

This content portion was highlighted with a cylindrical tube, hot wheel car display and large infographics with supporting facts. An endorsement for ethanol from the American lung association was also featured.

 

The economy

Ethanol production brings huge benefits to the American economy with all the jobs it supports and creates. To highlight this, we created a dimensional cylindrical tube display that broke down the many uses of corn with an accompanying flow chart on the ethanol production timetable and the many careers involved at every stage.

 

Homegrown energy

Our nation’s energy independence and it’s role in our economy is another crucial benefit to consumers. Using homegrown, renewable energy, the U.S. can replace 540 million barrels of crude oil imported from overseas. We used infographic designs to highlight this and several other supporting facts.

 

Engine smart

Engine performance was the last section the audience would engage with. This section was strategically placed at the end of the trailer layout because this was the a key takeaway that we wanted visitors to remember when they exited the trailer.

The content in this section helped educate consumers on which fuel would work for their vehicle, so they were aware of their ethanol options at the pump. This section included an interactive touchscreen and steering wheel to displays facts, and an ethanol pump with an interactive iPad inside the pump displaying the five different blends — E-15, E-30, E-85, Regular Unleaded 87 and Super Unleaded 87.

Bonus Content: View the E-15 “Super Duper” campaign that Lessing-Flynn completed with Iowa Corn.

 

The results

Since the launch of the Biofuels Mobile Education Trailer on June 27, 2018, it has traveled to more than 50 events and has had more than 15,000 visitors. To track our results we installed a people counter to the trailer entrance. The District Field Managers of Iowa Corn have had nothing but positive feedback from consumers walking through the doors. It has been a positive tool for them to take to events for education, outreach and promotion.