The campaign allows consumers to pick up six collector cards featuring a "dream car" with every purchase of Shell Optimax fuel.
Once 24 cards have been selected, participants can win one of the cars featured. The promotions ends in early July.

Howitt linked up with marketing agency Blend to print the cards.
"This job involved an increased number of variants and was quite complex," said Howitt account director for promotions Mark Ralphs. "This was a nice project and the cards really stand out."

The cards were printed at Howitt's Sutton in Ashfield site, and on its six-colour B1 Heidelberg CD press. The cards were four-colour plus gloss UV on both sides. The gloss was applied inline on the coater.
Howitt was heavily involved in the planning of the promotion to ensure the correct collation of all 24 cards. It produced 1,980 different sets of six cards.

"We can always get involved in the very early stages of a project," added Ralphs. He said that customers were increasingly interested in tying up promotional pushes with direct mail and packaging.

"We are certainly expanding into promotional packaging and these areas can all be integrated in a campaign," he said. Ralphs said the promotional market could be "volatile" but had helped Howitt to a good start this season.

"It depends on the events that are on at the moment," he said. "Football will often heighten requirements as well as new films."
Last year Howitt picked up the contract to print 20m scratch cards as part of BP's promotional tie-up with the Thunderbirds movie.

Story by Philip Chadwick