Nissan thinks outside the Cube
Now, that's thinking out of the box.
Published July 13, 2009Now, that's thinking out of the box.
Published July 13, 2009<p>Now, that's thinking out of the box.</p><p>Nissan Canada staged the biggest giveaway in automotive history on a balmy evening in late June when it handed 50 of its brand-new boxy Cube cars (worth more than $850,000) to contest winners across Canada through presentations simulcast in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.</p><p>Didn't hear about the promotion? </p><p>No surprises there since Nissan — in partnership with Toronto agency Capital C Communications — avoided the usual mainstream quadrangle of TV, radio, print and billboard to trumpet their car launch.</p><p>Instead, the automaker and its agency embarked on in mid-March on its Hypercube social media marketing campaign, that the company says offers significant rewards "creativity in Canada."</p><p>"The creative class is what's motivating everything these days," explains Jeff Parent, Nissan Canada's vice-president of sales and marketing.</p><p>"If you want to get something started, they're the ones who are talking to each other. </p><p>"They are the ones that other people coalesce around. Creative people make their art to infect others. For us, it was a natural fit."</p><p>With a recent Ipsos Reid poll estimating that 56 per cent of Canadians boast some sort of social networking profile, it's no wonder that Nissan and the rest of the auto industry — including recent network campaigners Ford and Honda — are shifting some of their advertising dollars away from traditional avenues.</p><p>And they're not the only industry following the trend.</p><p> Vacation vendor Sunquest Canada recently concluded its own series of online-driven contests to attract eyeballs to its MySpace, Facebook and Twitter sites. </p><p>Youth-driven products such as music, sneakers and snowboards have also been successfully marketed this way, advertising industry executives point out.</p><p> "This really portends the rise of the niches," notes Ben McConnell, co-author of the books <em>Creating Customer Evangelists</em> and <em>Citizen Marketers</em>. </p><p>"The niches are really where the big manufacturers especially have to focus their efforts now — that's where the growth industries are. You exploit the niche and hope it turns into a bigger audience along the way."</p><p>McConnell says by targeting specific consumers via social networks, corporations can trigger powerful word-of-mouth buzz about their products.</p><p>"When you find those core early adopters, those people who love something that's cool and new and are influential to a larger group outside themselves.</p><p>"That's not only how word-of-mouth spreads.</p><p>"But it is how trends are formed as well," he says.</p><p> "Finding that core group of people is always the hardest part."</p><p>Once you find them, you have to involve them, notes Rob Young, vice-president of PHD Canada, a media and communications agency based in Toronto and Montreal.</p><p> "What you're seeing is something called `activation,' which has become popular in the last five years," Young explains.</p><p> "Giving away 50 Cubes is an example of social activation: This is where you try to take your brand down to the street level and force some sort of direct interaction between the customer and the brand." </p><p>There was interaction aplenty at the Cube contest. Five hundred finalists, including Juno Award-winning recording artist Greg Sczebel, were assigned a blank webpage on Nissan's hypercube.ca website and invited to creatively "audition" for their chance to win a free vehicle.</p><p>"I was fascinated how people embraced this brand and did stuff so much more creative than we could have as an agency," said Capital C chief executive Tony Chapman, who estimates that five million potential consumers were "touched" by the three-month campaign. </p><p>"We had songwriters, dancers, poets and puppeteers — stuff that was so insanely brilliant, refreshing and original."</p><p>Sczebel wrote two songs, submitted a video for each, and — like all contestants — was allowed to rally votes from his online community. </p><p> "I really tapped into my fan and friend base on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter," says Sczebel, who leveraged free autographed copies of his pending October album <em>Love And The Lack Thereof </em>to attract supporters. </p><p>Sczebel ended up generating more than 4,000 votes and 21,000 profile views.</p><p>"That's pretty good exposure," he admits. </p><p>"That wasn't just my mom and my grandmother voting for me — that was a lot of people I didn't ask to check it out."</p><p>PHD's Rob Young says a successful social media campaign allocates advertising dollars efficiently.</p><p> "The thinking here is that you could spend $5 to reach 1,000 people in a TV commercial at a relatively low level of involvement, or spend $5 reaching 10 people at a high level of involvement. The high level of involvement — if you get the right consumers — is a better payback."</p><p>Unsuccessful campaigns can be catastrophic.</p><p>"It has to be done carefully and with the greatest sincerity," Young warns. </p><p>"If it's done poorly, then the consumer could build up a pretty harsh sense of cynicism towards the brand, and things can backfire."</p><p>Good campaigns can also save money.</p><p>Although Parent wouldn't divulge the cost of the multi-million-dollar campaign, he said Nissan Canada spent "a third of the amount of what I would normally spend on a car launch of this kind."</p><p>He says it's important to open up a dialogue with the consumer.</p><p>"We think we control the brand, but with the Internet, social media and the way people talk today, we don't anymore," says Parent. </p><p>"The brand is really what other people think and say about us. </p><p>"So, we're going to ask this community, `what do you want to do next? This is your car, your brand.' It will inform everything we do in traditional car launches for a long time."</p><p>Ben McConnell says social media marketing campaigns are the wave of the future.</p><p> "Programs like this will probably continue to grow for not only car manufacturers, but companies of all shapes and sizes," he says. </p>
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