• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer, December 11, 2024

Pilot, which launched its first major consumer-facing ad campaign earlier this year, is expanding that push with a holiday campaign that celebrates the excitement of the road trip. Pilot, the largest network of travel centers in the U.S. and a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, wants the new work to cement the company’s position as more than a highway truck stop, highlighting the coffee, food and gifts people can buy as they make the long trek home for the holiday. Adrienne Ingoldt, chief marketing officer of the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company, explains the evolution to consumer-facing marketing, and how those ads are working so far.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Retail Insider: Tell us about the campaign.

Adrienne Ingoldt: The holiday campaign is an extension of what we started earlier this year, our first consumer-facing ad campaign in Pilot’s 65-year history.

We wanted to highlight that upbeat journey of being out on the road, whether we’re reaching professional truck drivers or an auto driver traveling for the holidays. We want to be your trusty wingman, and help lift you up, fuel you up, fill you up, and get you back out on the road and to the people that you love.

It's about much more than just reaching a destination. We’ve included cheerful moments along the way. And we wanted to do that literally, so the campaign includes a $1 off coffee coupon that we’re offering through our My Rewards Plus app.

The campaign also includes our philanthropic arm, with “Make the Miles Matter,” our gift guide and a cute little elf that we’re selling in stores.

Retail Insider: This switch to consumer ads means a broader audience. How is the mindset of regular consumers different than the professional truck drivers who are your core audience?

Ingoldt: Pilot is unique in that our travel centers are built for the needs of truck drivers and RV travelers. And for most of our 65-year history, we’ve focused on the B2B needs of trucking fleets. Those drivers need more than food, fuel and a bathroom break. For many, we’re also the place where they shower, wash their clothes, have a hot Thanksgiving meal and park to sleep through the night. We target our business around having everything that they need to make the most of their miles and get there sooner.

The new work focuses on the end user, and making these ads has been exciting for the team, letting them roll up their sleeves in our budding marketing practice and create a campaign that makes Pilot relevant for normal folks out on the road. We kicked it off over the summer with several components. First, we focused on summer travel for auto customers, then in September, we did a big Driver Appreciation Month, celebrating the professional drivers that keep our economy moving. This holiday work is the third chapter.

Retail Insider: What are you hoping this new work accomplishes besides boosting sales?

Ingoldt: We’re most interested in introducing Pilot to new people, so tracking new visitors and awareness are the important metrics in this campaign. In particular, we're celebrating our coffee, which we think is the best out on the road, and we are tracking those coffee redemptions. We’ll watch that closely through the next few months and see who we've built new relationships with.

Retail Insider: What has that been like for you? You previously worked at Jack in the Box, so you’ve done big consumer ad pushes before.

Ingoldt: It's been fun! I came to Pilot because of this unique opportunity, taking a 65-year-old brand and for the first time, defining some big questions. Who are we? Why do we exist? Who are we for? Who are the new people that we're bringing into the brand? That's not something you get to do for big brands very often. And we’ve learned a lot, rooting our purpose of showing people they matter at every turn and leveraging that with strengths that we've had for decades.

We’re here to lift you up on the road, recognizing that journeys have high and low points. Sometimes trips are tough, but we want to be the one who understands long-range travel and show you that we understand these micro-moments and how you feel when you are on the interstate and see a Pilot in the middle of nowhere. And we want to get you back out on the road and remind you what you love about driving. That’s why the tagline, “See you out here,” works.

Retail Insider: What sales trends are you seeing?

Ingoldt: As with any retailer, we’ve had challenges over the last decade. We serve 1.2 million people a day, so it's increasingly important for us to make sure that we have the right value propositions, the right mix of products and the right insight to what our specific group of highway travelers need.

We want to be relevant, and I'm proud of the work that we do from a personalization perspective. We have a best-in-class loyalty program and serve meaningful, personalized offers in our app every day. That has been a game-changer, bringing people back to the brand again and again.