Company: SMOKING GUN PR Campaign: Nissan Shows It Cares Category: Consumer PR Campaign of the Year - North - WINNER Objectives Campaign brief: Nissan UK soft launched its new CARED4 proposition in 50 of its leading dealerships nationwide and wanted PR to be a main driver to reach a wide consumer audience. CARED4 is a new brand and service pledge for the used car sector of its market - not major general news on its own - and to ensure media take up of the brand name and not just Nissan was a challenging prospect! - Make Nissan CARED4 a recognisable manufacturer used car brand - Cause potential customers to reappraise Nissan and increase loyalty and retention from existing customers - Secure widespread UK media coverage of Nissan Cared4 - NOT on motoring pages - Explain the service proposition to consumers in memorable ways Strategy & Target Audience SGPR identified the need to create a campaign platform in order to engage and educate consumers and to generate a strong news angle. The strategy was to position Nissan as ‘owning' caring in the UK in relation to UK communities, positively placing Nissan at the heart of middle England against a wider backdrop of doom and gloom. This would be brought to life in the flesh and across all media platforms. The campaign hook was to launch a search for the UK’s most caring individual, someone who consistently gives back more than they take from their community, with the winner being presented with a used car and other entrants being rewarded with treats ranging from shopping vouchers to weekends away. In order to bring an impartial element to the campaign, we secured the involvement of Kindness UK founder, David Jamilly as a media spokesperson and guest judge. The mechanic for entry was via a campaign microsite and bespoke Facebook app - both of which were fully branded and explained the business proposition, with links to the official Nissan CARED4 website. Nominees had to demonstrate how and why they add positively to their community by their caring actions. Action Nominations were driven in a number of ways: -Social media content and influencer outreach - highlighting the peoples stories and their efforts -Press office - on, offline and broadcast - including digital PR and newswire usage, profiling the winners -News generation - commissioning bespoke research in order to generate angles, 72% of Brits no longer know their neighbours names as community spirit erodes - perfect Daily Mail fodder and the springboard to launch Nissan’s solution to celebrate the community via national news and broadcast interviews -A rolling plan of targeted media relations outreach attractive to national and regional media across all disciplines was devised and delivered. Outreach was also targeted to dealer-specific regional press to announce the competition with quotes from individual dealership managers. In order to take the messages of the campaign to the streets, we devised a series of random acts of kindness stunts to be performed in key dealership footprint areas to create an experiential buzz and bring ‘caring’ to life. These were: -  Free car washes - Glasgow -  Free M6Toll payments - Birmingham -  Free umbrellas (on a rainy day!) – Manchester Each supported by brand ambassador teams handing out campaign leaflets and branded car air fresheners to drive visits to the campaign microsite/Facebook. These, along with the winner’s car presentation were filmed for use in social media platforms and video distribution networks to further amplify the campaign. The ultimate winning couple had fostered hundreds of children over the last thirty years in Bournemouth - truly epitomising the CARED4 ethos. Outputs: - Cared4 competition microsite and bespoke Facebook app for entries - General launch story for media local to the 50 dealers - Commissioned bespoke research and created a fresh news story - Radio Day utilising 3rd party spokesperson David Jamilly - Used the research to create an infographic to generate further online buzz -Regional media profiling of the final shortlist and winner - Video news content produced of the winner and seeded online - Random acts of kindness carried out, including: distribution of umbrellas in rainy Manchester, washing cars in a Glasgow shopping centre and paying for toll roads on the M6 during rush hour - Production and distribution of the campaign flyer promoting the competition Results MEDIA: 503 pieces of coverage, including: 7 National Print 8 National Online 345 Regional pieces 21 Broadcast pieces This was a 900 per cent uplift on our target KPI Overall OTS: 117,814,702 - on a target of 250,00-500,000 Key message penetration: 99 per cent of articles featured the message - ‘CARED4’ Overall ROI: 3,366:1 (OTS : £) DIGITAL: 1,000 unique visitors to the microsite cared4competition.com 150 nomination entries to the competition Nearly 3 minutes average visitor time to the site 1:4 visitors to the site progressed to the ‘enter’ page Half then progressed to complete the nomination At a glance: 831 visits 760 unique visitors Dwell time: 1.5 minutes (average) Largest traffic peak was 29th November - the research launch date Both microsite visitor numbers and entries were highest in the three cities where experiential activity took place COMMERCIAL: -36 per cent year on year increase in traffic to the CARED4 used vehicle locator -The first 50 dealers live on the CARED4 programme reported a 10 per cent higher level of enquiries on used cars during this period than non-live dealers -The first 50 dealers live on the CARED4 programme reported a 13 per cent higher level of demos on used cars during this period than non-live dealers -This was reflected in a sales increase due to maintaining conversion ratios URLs SGPR created all the social media planning and timing of content delivery, plus influencer identification however the actual posting of tweets/ Facebook etc was handled by Nissan’s team The PRmoment Golden Hedgehog Awards 2014 are now open for entries. 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