Hedgehog Hall of Fame: Nissan & Performance PR - Nissan Juke-R

Company: Nissan and Performance PR Campaign: Nissan Juke-R Categoty: Integrated Communications Campaign of the Year - South - WINNER Objectives - Make Nissan’s brand-new compact crossover model, Juke, more masculine in appeal and increase positive conversations around its bold design. - Deliver credibility for a future performance, sporty version of the model and cost-effectively maintain Juke sales across Europe when TVC was paused from November 2011 to March 2012. - Increase public engagement with Nissan Juke Facebook page. Strategy & Target Audience   Strategy - Create a “one-off” PR car by marrying the halo performance of Nissan’s GT-R supercar with the body of the Juke - Engage Juke directly with opinion-forming petrolhead buyers across Europe - the group most likely to purchase a sports-orientated Juke and the most vocal ‘earned media’ online car community Research: Target Audience & Tactics Working with Nissan’s marcomms team, plus commissioned audience analysis and profiling from TGI Global, the target demographic for a ‘sports’ Juke was identified as: “Medium to high earners, heavily engaged with cars, view their car as a reflection of their personality. Male majority (75 per cent), aged 36-45, early adopters and technophiles who access the internet extensively.” The strategy involved putting the consumer first by creating digital content which allowed people to share in the story-telling. Activity was to focus on creating content that would create online conversation and increase engagement with consumers through the official Nissan Juke Facebook page. Action Phase 1:  Oct – Dec 2011 Key online motoring influencers were identified and, although this was a European project, the US-based Jalopnik.com was chosen to ‘unofficially’ break the story due to the 11,000 sites globally linking to its coverage. Within 48 hours this had generated 445 articles online across Europe; four days later, when Nissan formally announced Juke-R this rose to 1,065. A series of “webisodes” was launched on Nissan’s European YouTube channel, allowing the target audience to follow every step of the build, development and testing – normally a highly secretive process. Each one promoted the official Juke Facebook page as the destination for the latest information, rather than a section of Nissan’s website, helping increase traffic dramatically. The first video received 1.1m views; key influencer sites such as Top Gear (5.5m unique users a month) and PistonHeads.com (Europe’s largest “petrolhead” community with 3.2m members), dedicated areas where all videos were hosted. Phase 2: Dec 2011 to Jan 2012 With Juke-R creating the ‘positive debate’ required around Juke, Nissan revealed the Juke Nismo concept at the Tokyo Motor Show (Dec) as the natural production successor to the one-off PR car. To increase the ‘performance’ storytelling around the Juke, the first public outing for the Juke-R then saw the team go to Dubai in January. There, the first four winners of Nissan’s award-winning GT Academy programme – which takes gamers and turns them into fully-fledged racing drivers – were to race together in the Dubai 24 Hours endurance race in a Nismo-badged Nissan 370Z. The Juke-R took centre stage as official pace car of the race; televised live on Eurosport. Nissan markets from across Europe (and by now USA, Japan and Middle East due to interest) flew in 40 “tier 1” opinion-forming media from digital, print and broadcast to watch the race, test-drive the Juke-R and experience other performance and motorsport models from Nissan. The Stunt The Dubai activity culminated with a one-off street race around a specially-constructed circuit at the Dubai International Marine Club – known as the supercar playground for locals. Here, a live race, watched by media and local VIP guests, pitched Juke-R against a Ferrari 458 Italia, Lamborghini Gallardo and Mercedes SLS AMG, each driven by professional racers. Branded content – including unofficial versions from attending media – was then seeded online and promoted through the Nissan Juke Facebook page. Phase 3:  May 2012 onwards The finale was the creation of an online cinematic short film - entitled Desert Nemesis - featuring the Juke-R and Nissan’s inaugural GT Academy winner, Lucas Ordonez. Released at the start of May 2012, it signalled the beginning of Phase 3 – a Pan-European tour of five disruptive social experiential events including street racing in Russia. Results What began as a PR car has now become Nissan’s most expensive ever production road car. Juke-R was seen as so desirable amongst the super-wealthy that genuine commercial demand allowed Nissan to put it into a limited production. - Despite no ATL spend, sales of Juke rose by 19 per cent across Europe between the campaign period of November 2011 and February 2012, with the key ‘performance car buying market’ of the UK witnessing a massive 69 per cent increase. - Juke enjoyed its largest share of voice amongst its competitors, rising from 16 per cent pre- launch to 26-28 per cent between November and March - Juke-R improved the positive sentiment towards the Juke by 25.5 per cent (source: Synthesio) - 20 per cent increase in ‘good opinion’ of Juke (November vs March) - 33 per cent increase in familiarity of Juke (November vs March) - 100 per cent increase in consideration to buy as a first choice - Worldwide, there were more than 26,934 online articles/mentions of Juke-R with 16,154 in Europe alone - Media Coverage included core motoring titles in the UK as well as Europe and the US. UK titles included Top Gear, Fifth Gear, Evo, Autocar, Auto Express, PistonHeads. - YouTube Nissan Juke-R branded content gained more than 6 million views - Nissan Juke Facebook fans rose from 17,000 to 67,000 between October and January URLs Introduction to Juke-R YouTube film Nissan Juke-R vs Supercar race in Dubai Desert Nemesis “cinematic” film Official Nissan Juke Facebook page Jalopnik exclusive of Juke-R story Autoblog from Juke-R reveal Top Gear from Juke-R drives in Dubai The PRmoment Golden Hedgehog Awards 2014 are now open for entries. Here are this years updated categories.