Infiniti and AutoTrader Innovation Showcase

AutoTrader & Infiniti teamed up to create a standout and highly creative brand partnership campaign to promote Nissan’s luxury prestige marque to Car Buyers of premium high-performance saloons. Using a combination of data-driven creativity and effective brand story-telling guided by editorial insight, we created a stunning campaign for Infiniti designed to make consumers fall in love with the cars. The partnership resulted in a demonstrable positive uplift on actual brand metrics for Infiniti but also sales and delivered actual real world value to Infiniti.

The Infiniti partnership engaged a highly targeted base of 175,000 unique users during the four month campaign duration and in terms of effectiveness resulted in a +16% increase in aided brand awareness and the campaign ranked in the top 2% of all automotive campaigns measured by Millward Brown in December 2015. In terms of actual ROI, we also contributed to Infiniti’s sales helping them increase their sales figures by 213% year-on-year (Source: SMMT data). This campaign was one of the only pieces of advertising activity Infiniti had engaged in The UK during the period of measurement so the attribution of our campaign is clear. The content can be viewed here:

Our primary goals were to increase awareness of the Infiniti brand; to clearly articulate Infiniti’s point-of-difference and also give consumers a compelling reason why they should choose an Infiniti vehicle as their next luxury executive saloon. Our search data confirmed that Infiniti’s models paled behind the usual suspects but also there was a problem as a trend line we identified was that long-term engagement with the brand on a downward curve and also quite a long way behind its competitors – brand awareness and model recognition were low.

Creative Execution:

There were a variety of challenges involved that we needed to address to make the Infiniti marque resonate and connect with consumers. Infiniti is relatively unknown as a brand in Europe. We’ve already mentioned the low awareness as a challenge for Infiniti but there was even less knowledge about their specific models and market positioning. The brand aspires to break into the premium market, fiercely dominated by the likes of established players such as Lexus, Audi, Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar. To break this market brands need to deliver something really special that captures the imagination of consumers.

To realise our partnership, Infiniti put trust in us and together we raised the bar on creativity that inspired the end consumer into action as our quoted results demonstrate. The main crux of our content was about getting users to fall in love with Infiniti Cars. We showcased two-star models from the range via bespoke editorialised video content. The first execution featured Road Tester Paul Bond taking the Infiniti Q50S on a road trip from the Black Mountains in Wales to Liverpool’s Albert Dock. The aim was to show off the Q50S’ gutsy performance as a driver’s car in the epic and primal setting of the Brecon Beacons as Paul Bond pushed it to its limits then taking on a scenic drive from Wales to Liverpool. The final setting in Liverpool was about showing the car’s more refined and cultured side, creating a parallel between Infiniti as a new progressive marque and Liverpool being seen as the cultural capital of England, a regenerated setting of modernity and hope.

The second video was creatively a tour-de-force and was a night shoot almost entirely shot between 10 pm and 5 am across three days to capture a neon-soaked aesthetic designed to contrast with the first video we created for Infiniti. This execution allowed us to showcase the Infiniti Q70 Hybrid in a stunning but introspective London night-drive fronted by our Editor-In-Chief Jon Quirk. Visually the video pushed the boundaries in an almost art-house take on Infiniti as a brand in general with Jon asking several rhetorical questions on Infiniti as a brand and making parallels between the Japanese and British way of artisan craftsmanship resulting in vehicles like the Q70. You can see our execution here:

All of the video content was housed in a special channel we created for Infiniti that was designed to create a premium glossy landmark presence for the brand and also showcase the brand’s main USPs of cutting-edge design, innovative technology offering consumers breath of fresh air compared to the usual suspects. Our aim was also to set-the-scene for some of Infiniti’s forthcoming innovations and a host of new models which were about to be released in 2016.

Results:

As you can see from the Millward Brown research figures who tracked this campaign, the content we created for Infiniti absolutely resonated with increased brand awareness of =16% in aided awareness and appeared in the top 2% of the effectiveness of all automotive campaigns Millward Brown had measured in 2015. We engaged over 175,000 highly targeted consumers in the market for a premium executive saloon for an average of over + 1 minute 30 seconds per user dwell-time helping to successfully increase awareness of the marque, drive leads and also contributed to sales of the car in the real world. Infiniti sales were up 213% year-on-year according to SMMT.

Testimonial:

“The Infiniti and AutoTrader brand partnership was a highly effective campaign which helped Infiniti raise awareness of our position as a challenger brand looking to disrupt the premium market as well as increasing consideration of our models amongst in-market buyers of high-end marques. The brand integration was the perfect balance of engaging creativity which led to actual tangible results in the form of increased awareness of Infiniti and proving the overall effectiveness of this campaign in terms of both high engagements and leads generated.”

Jerome Charrier

Regional Marketing Manager – Infiniti, Northern Europe