Recently featured in Metro Calgary and other news outlets, a story about Nissan’s innovative use of non-traditional media is a perfect example of how to directly reach your target market and shake things up.

Nissan staged a competition through a custom built website ( hypercube.ca ) where contestants competed to win one of 50 Cubes.  The premise behind the campaign was to allow 500 entries for people to demonstrate “Cube Worthiness“. The 50 winners will then take possession of their new wheels and blog about them for a year.

If we dissect the facts somewhat, we can find a few key points to building a successful social marketing campaign:

1. Core Idea: It’s something to talk about. In this case, it was the prize. Having a piece of content or a core idea is absolutely essential to a successful social media campaign. It allow you as the marketer to tell people about, to weave a story around. As we all know, it’s stories that get remembered over facts and figures. Also, including a contesting component only fueled the spread.
2. Targeting: Entry price for a Cube: $16k. Perfect pricing (and prizing) for their intended market. Also the styling of the car speaks to a certain target market. Generally speaking it would be younger, internet savvy, creative people. Tying a user generated component speaks so well to this demo, that it was obviously a great targeting move.
3. Simplicity: Record video, get car. Doesn’t get any simpler then that. Of course, the preparation and execution on Nissan’s end was a bit more involved then that. And on the other side as well… to win, your video obviously has to beat the competition. It allows the audience to be creative and have their work seen by their peers and the world. But all that aside… it still boiled down to: record video, get car. Brilliant.

Asking the winners to blog about the car for a year will ensure longer term online visibility and I would imagine media coverage as well. The end goal of this campaign is to create what I would call ‘Cube Evangelists‘ who will then promote the car to their own network. Chances are… their network of friends would consist of more young, internet savvy, creative people with a need for a stylish lower cost car.

They’re building a community and that is exactly what a well planned social media campaign should do. Now go and find your tribe!

Find out more about our social media planning services, and contact us to chat about your ideas. We specialize in developing effective campaigns that deliver results.

- Ernest.