Smart Diesel: Born to grow.

EUROPE

How to grow from 0 to over 350 million $ annual turnover?

Client: Smart Diesel
Markets: Europe

Smart Diesel is a soul brand for Handsome Advertising, because it was founded by clients and old friends with whom we have a history of over 20 years of partnership.
It is a soul brand because it started with just an idea, and together with the clients we created the path of this business in a very competitive B2B market: the energy market.
Having relevant experience in transport (we were the advertising agency that worked 12 years for edy spedition, from a small company to the largest haulier in the region, with over 1200 trucks), also having relevant experience in services for transportation industry (we have launched Diesel 24 and we were already working with the famous Shell, through the local company TSG), the new brand Smart Diesel benefited from our know-how.

From the first idea, we continued with a brand story, visual identity, a strong online image and launching the first prepaid fuel card in Europe.
We continued with a strong marketing plan, a relevant positioning on the market, training literature and resources for the sales team, industry fairs participation and pitch strategies and presentations for strategic partners such as OMV Austria.

Today, Smart Diesel is part of the largest European group of services for carriers, having been acquired by DKV, a pioneer German company on the fuel card market, the acquisition being considered the transaction of the year 2020 in the region.

We are proud to have participated in building an independent brand, from 0 to over $350 million annual turnover, with the potential to reach the first billion in the coming years.
We continue the partnership with Smart Diesel and it remains a soulful brand for Handsome.

Visual identity and online presence

Handsome Advertising completely realized the visual identity, brand strategy and online presence of Smart Diesel.
Together with the client, we managed to differentiate ourselves on an extremely competitive and dynamic market.
Basically, it was a market where there were no free spaces, but through an effective image and communication strategy we managed to create market spaces worth hundreds of millions of $ few years later.

Training resources for the sales team

Being a team with new sales people, we prepared training manuals that contained both sales and communication strategies as well as concrete sales scripts and answers to all possible customer questions.
We even prepared a disruptive strategy to make possible the introduction of a completely new product: the prepaid fuel card.
In Smart Diesel marketing, we used the blue ocean strategy, where sustainable success comes not from directly confronting competitors in an extremely aggressive and competitive market, but from creating “blue oceans” – new untapped market spaces, ready for growth.

B2B events and fairs

Participation in B2B events (event and fairs for carriers, agriculture, construction) strengthened our image on the market and in a short time we became not only an alternative, but the number 1 solution for many industries that use diesel fuel.

A new retail brand, Smart +

After the consolidation of Smart Diesel in the B2B sector, the entry into the retail market followed.
Handsome Advertising embraced the challenge of developing a new and modern retail brand, in an extremely dynamic market. We started with small steps, but in Smart + locations, we managed to offer customers services at the level of global brands (OMV, Shell, Mol) and even higher. Smart Diesel and Smart + are examples which demonstrate that an intelligent business strategy and an effective marketing approach can create a startup like a “a Goliath company in a world of Davids”, a company which later become „a David” itself.